Probabilities
by Thescarredman
Summary: The Connor clan runs into a pair of strangers who shake everything they thought they knew about the War Against the Machines.
1. Rendezvous

God does not play dice with the universe.  
>-Albert Einstein<p>

Not only does God play dice with the universe, He doesn't even let us see the numbers.  
>-Stephen Hawking<p>

It was, John Connor decided, the worst family vacation ever. From the second seat of the four-wheel-drive passenger van, he stared out the dusty window, watching the barren landscape roll by. They'd turned off U.S. Ninety-five a few minutes ago, and were traveling maybe thirty miles an hour down a dirt road in the Nevada desert, approaching a little-used part of the huge Nellis Air Force Reservation. The windows were all up, and the air conditioning was struggling to keep the oven-like heat out of the vehicle. To his mother, who was driving, he said, "I thought we were meeting this guy in Vegas."

The 'guy' was one of his Uncle Derek's shadier contacts, a dealer in high-priced illicit goods and services who was presently brokering an offer from, not one, but a pair of crooked FBI agents - men, Derek's contact had hinted, who had big gambling debts to cover. The bent Feds were offering up law enforcement's complete file on the Connors – not a copy; they claimed to be able to lay hands on or destroy every scrap of evidence, documentary or physical, that the government had collected on the Connor 'terror cell' in the past twenty-odd years, from witness lists to spent shell casings. If these men could really ransack the evidence locker and file cabinet, so to speak, and wipe out all official memory of them, it would bring the investigation and manhunt to a stumbling halt, and the Connors would have a whole lot more room to breathe for a while. It was a dream come true, provided they could meet the men's price – and they weren't walking into a trap. The meeting was set for six o'clock the next evening, and they'd planned to get there early and reconnoiter.

His mother peered over the steering wheel through the van's dusty windshield. "Just a little detour."

"We were a mile from the city limits when you turned off. That was an hour and a half ago. Where are we going?"

"I've got a place here I want to check on."

John looked to Cameron, sitting beside him, but she stared back, giving away nothing. He noticed that her skin bore a light sheen. _Hot enough in here to make a cyborg sweat, how about that. _In the shotgun seat, his uncle Derek sat slumped, apparently dead to the world: no help there. "Mom. You've got caches all over. What's so special about this one?"

"It's not just a weapons stash. It's an underground shelter. It's got food and water, a library, lots of things."

He felt his jaw muscles jump. "Someplace to run to on J-Day."

"If we're close by, right. I've got a few more, places we've been or might go." She stopped at a faint fork in the sketch of a road. "Don't worry. We'll be in the hotel tonight. We're just so close, I wanted to make sure it's still secure."

Cameron said, "Are we there yet?"

"Shut up." She took the right-hand track headed towards the mountains.

Derek spoke up. "You sure we're going the right way?"

"No. But I think I am." She looked at her son in the rearview. "We're not lost, it just isn't easy to find this place. Another reason to come here, so I can get a GPS fix on it."

"Why didn't you do that when you set it up?"

"Because there was no such thing. No smart comments. I don't need any help to feel like a fossil."

At least the sun was behind them and headed down, he thought. It should cool off pretty quick. When they went back, they'd probably be retracing their path in the dark. But they wouldn't get lost, at least; Cam would remember every turn and leg of the trip.

A sweaty eternity later, they reached a spot where the track bent at the base of a low ridge, and the van slowed to a stop. John could feel the temperature rising inside the car just from sitting and idling. He looked at his mom. "Now what?"

"It's just on the other side of the ridge. I think." She unbuckled and got out of the car, with Derek following. She stared up the forty-five-degree grade. "Come on. You should all be able to find it if I'm not with you."

The rise turned out to be more dune than outcrop, with knobs of stone poking out of the slithery sand at intervals. They trudged up the slope, their feet sinking in and leaving little avalanches below them with every step, until they reached the top.

Derek scanned the downward slope in front and the gully below. There wasn't a sign of man anywhere. "Where is it?"

"Other side, where the land starts to rise again. I left a marker, just a rusty old wheel and tire half-buried in the sand. Nobody'd pick it up."

"Well, what if they did anyway?"

"If they tried, they'd find out the tire is filled with concrete. It didn't go anywhere." She brought a small pair of sport glasses to her eyes and looked across the little valley. "I see it," she said, not quite hiding her relief; John figured, after so many years, she might have been less sure of her memory than she let on. "Let's go." She took three steps down the slope and froze.

At the bottom of the opposite slope a hundred yards away, a greenish light flickered and went out. A dust-devil rose and spun away. The flicker returned, stronger.

John swallowed. "Derek. Is that-"

"How should I know? I never saw one from the outside."

"I've only seen departures," Cameron said. "This is different."

They all scrambled back over the ridge and peeked over. The flicker was now strong enough to assume a faint spherical shape in the bright sunlight. Derek split a look between John and Cameron. "Someone knew we'd be coming here." He glanced down at the van, then reached behind him and drew his pistol. Cam and Sarah did the same, making John feel like a stupid kid for being the only one not armed.

The ball of light was much brighter now, with streamers of energy flickering and waving around it like a Tesla coil. For a moment it became opaque, then flashed and disappeared, leaving spots drifting in John's eyes. Two figures, locked together, fell out of the blackened circle into a low embankment a step away.

"Skin or metal?" Derek asked tensely.

"I can't tell," Sarah said. "Why did they fall out of it like that? Cameron?"

"I don't know," Cameron said, eyes locked on the visitors. "They're not fighting."

Nobody asked John's opinion about anything. The four of them lay prone with just their eyes showing over the ridgetop, studying the distant figures as they stood up. "They're looking around," John said, mostly to be contributing.

"Looking for us?" John's mother tightened her grip on her Glock.

"One of them's looking at the sky," Derek said.

"This isn't right," Cameron said.

The two bubble travelers turned towards each other as if speaking. The taller one reached for the other's hand and held it, then slipped an arm around the smaller one's waist.

"They're human." John stood.

Cameron grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him back down. "John. They're wearing clothes."

-0-

"-out, Jack!" The two figures thudded into the sand.

"Oof!" The dark-haired man with the patch over his left eye clutched at his companion and glanced around. "What the hell just happened?"

"I saw the control panel activate as you stepped on the disc," the little blonde in his arms said. "Too late. Booby-trap, I suppose."

"Some nitwit who abandoned it in place without making sure it was secure, more likely." Jack released her, and they stood. As he brushed at his khaki shirt and cargo pants, he said, "A goddamned teleporter. If I'd known IO had something like that stashed in there, I wouldn't have brought a truck." He shielded his eye with a hand and glanced up the ridge across the gap. "Where are we?"

"I don't know. Tracking system's out. I can't locate the kids." The strain in his companion's voice told Jack what she thought of that. She turned in a circle, studying their surroundings. Then she looked up at the sky. "Jack. I don't think we went anywhere."

"Eh?" He glanced around. "Where's the warehouse complex then?"

"I don't know. But I recognize that landmark. And that one. This is right where the warehouse should be."

He looked all around him. There was no sign of destruction, just empty desert, as if the big fenced compound full of concrete-and-sheet-metal buildings had never been. If not a different 'where', then… Their surroundings had probably looked just like this in 1970. And 1870. And might in 2070, too, perhaps. "No, dammit, that doesn't make sense. Proscribed technology or not, if IO had a time machine, they'd have used it."

"If they had, would we know?"

"Damn right we would. They'd already rule the world."

She nodded. "The sun's in the same position, allowing for the time we were inside looking around. And…" She stared straight into the sun for a moment. "The inclination's the same. Doesn't that mean it's the same season? If I could see stars, I'd be more confident of that." She blinked. "Ambient temp and relative humidity are within a point of when we went in the warehouse, for what it's worth."

"Not much. Afternoon desert wouldn't change much." Jack cursed again. "Well, the nearest paved road's that way. Or not. But we've got to go somewhere."

"I don't think we should leave just yet."

"We can't stay." He patted the pockets of his cargo pants, taking inventory. "We're in the high Nevada desert, and I've only got one bottle of water."

"You could have mine. That's almost two."

"When did you top off?"

"You know me. About a minute before I tackled you. I could go without for years, if I had to."

"That's never going to happen again." He reached for her hand, pulled her gently to him, and circled her waist with his arm. He looked down on her from a twelve-inch height difference. "If that road is still there, it's a day's walk away. You might end up carrying me."

"To the ends of the Earth. But just listen a moment. I know we can't stay long, but could we stay seventeen hours?"

"What difference would that make?"

"Because I saw…" She glanced past his shoulder and stilled. "Jack. I just saw someone, up at the top of that ridge. A young man in jeans and a tee shirt. He stood up to look at us, and someone else pulled him back down. A girl."

"Weird place to neck. Then again, who knows? Maybe there's a shopping mall or a picnic shelter right on the other side." He turned to face the slope. "At any rate, we've got a ride. Just play it cool." He waved at their unseen observers. "Hey there!" He shouted, his voice echoing from the slope. "We're lost. Can you tell us where we are?"

"Jack, the girl has a pistol."

He paused, then continued waving. "Doesn't matter." He started across the narrow gap to the base of the other ridge, keeping his hands in sight. He didn't have to reach behind him to know his Smith and Wesson was still stuck in his waistband.

-0-

"He's coming straight at us." Derek cursed under his breath. "From now on, I'm not taking a trip to the grocery store without a rifle."

"There's one in the van," Sarah Connor said, "but you'd never get back with it in time. Besides, I think we should talk first."

"Come on, Cam." John stood again. "We're the ones they saw."

His mother looked up at him, face clouding. "John…"

"He's right," Derek said. "If you want to talk. They don't know we're here, so we provide cover. Don't go too far, John."

"I never do." He started down the slope with his pet killing machine at his side.

"Wait." Sarah Connor rose to join them. "Cover us."

-0-

"Three." Jack, still walking, eyed the ridge ahead and the people headed down to meet them. "How many more do you think there are?"

"One, at least," his companion said. "The woman spoke to someone as she was getting up."

"She armed?"

"Yes. Probably the one out of sight, too, don't you think?"

He kept walking. The ground began to rise under his feet. "Yes. Easy does it, Anna. I don't want to hurt anyone just yet."

-0-

They met a third of the way up the slope. John stopped ten feet short, to stay above the newcomers; Cam and his mom moved aside to flank and to give Derek a clear line of fire. "We saw you arrive," John said. "We know where you came from."

The one-eyed man and the little blonde girl at his shoulder stopped as well. The man stuck his thumbs in his pockets. "Good. At least somebody knows what's going on."

Sarah said, "You don't know how you got here?"

"Not really." The scars keeping the eyepatch company on the left side of his face puckered as he squinted up at them. "But I'm pretty sure we don't belong here. My name is Lynch, John Lynch. This is Anna."

"Pleased to meet you." The girl was tiny, maybe five feet or so, and slender, with light blonde hair cut almost boy-short. John guessed she was his age, maybe a little younger; the man's daughter, maybe? She was watching Cam with a little frown, and John tensed a bit, wondering if she'd seen her in the future and was about to make a scene. But she didn't say anything, just kept an eye on her. It occurred to John that, aside from arriving in clothes, the two visitors were too clean, well-dressed and well-fed to be travelers from Derek's future world.

He decided to introduce himself as John Baum, to maybe learn some more about these people before risking anything. "This is Cameron. I'm-"

"I'm Sarah Connor," his mom said, "and this is my son John." Her right hand drifted towards her back.

_Way to go, Mom, _John thought with a tinge of resentment at being upstaged. _Let's find out right away what side they're on and deal with them._

The man's face blanked. "Really." Something in his tone set off alarms. "John and Sarah Connor."

Cameron closed in, hands lifting. "What do you know-"

The little blonde disappeared from John Lynch's side and reappeared with her arms wrapped around Cameron. Cam spun and shrugged, trying to get free. Impossibly, the other girl held on, keeping the cyborg's arms pinned to her sides.

"Don't." John Lynch was pointing a pistol at his mother, who still had one hand behind her back; he'd drawn before she could reach her weapon, even though her hand had started from halfway there. She stepped in front of her son with her hand still at the small of her back, waiting for a chance.

Cameron swung her head forward and butted the girl's forehead with a _pock_ like two bowling balls colliding. John looked for Cam's attacker to fall to the ground, dead or unconscious.

"Ow," the girl said, and held on as Cameron dragged her across the slope. "Jack," she called, her voice rising, "I don't know how long I can hold her..."

"When she gets loose, she'll kill you both," Sarah Connor said. "Throw the gun down."

"You're misreading the situation entirely," the man said. "If she can't hold her, she'll kill her."

John looked at the locked pair. Cam threw herself to the ground with Anna underneath her and rolled a short way downslope. The little blonde clung like a leech. Cameron started to rise, but Anna hooked a leg around Cam's knee and forced it to bend, bringing them back to the sand. Heat poured off them, making the air shimmer. He could hear Cam's inner works _whining_ as she strained. And Anna…

His neck and forearms prickled as he watched the flesh seem to melt off the little blonde until the bones jutted, making her look like a picture from a concentration camp. She hissed through clenched teeth, "_Jack!_" She pressed the palm of her hand against the side of Cameron's head. Under the tight-stretched skin of her forearm, John saw something besides ulna and radius bones, something complex and artificial and scary.

Heart pounding, John looked past his mother at the man holding the gun on them. "What is it?"

"Twenty-millimeter carbine loaded with anti-armor rounds. Whatever your girl's skull is made of, it's not enough." The man suddenly twisted like a snake dancer as shots barked out and bullets kicked up the sand behind him. The gun never wavered. "Not working," Lynch said.

Sarah Connor's hand moved to her weapon, but John beat her to it, wrapping his hand around the frame and trigger guard. "Mom. Derek just _shot_ at him. If they were here to hurt us they'd be doing it. Cameron," he called, "stand down. Before somebody gets hurt. Derek, hold fire." His mother gasped as he pulled the gun from her waist and held it up by the frame.

"Keep it." The man raised his gun to point at the sky. "But I do think some explanations are in order. All around."

Cameron and Anna were lying in the sand. Cam had quit struggling. John watched the deathly thin little blonde reinflate, seeming to gain fifty pounds in seconds. She untangled herself from the terminator and stood, flowing upward from the sand with easy grace. "Whew. Sorry about that. No hard feelings?" She offered a hand.

"No." Cameron rose and faced her. Instead of shaking Anna's hand, she grasped it by the fingers and stared at it, turning it this way and that. "Not organic. Unknown synthetic."

"Yours seems a little too real." Anna reached up to smooth down a torn flap of skin the size of a quarter on Cam's forehead, covering the gleaming alloy. "Does that hurt?"

"Not really."

"Can you fix it?"

"It heals itself."

"No scar?"

"No."

"Wow." She brushed at Cameron's dusty hair, raising a cloud. "Fraid your hair's a mess, sweetie."

"Hair is hard to get right," Cam said.

"Doll," Lynch said, "are you okay?"

"No." Anna made a face. "I'm filthy. I've got _sand_ in my undies. Ecch."

Sarah said, "What is she? A machine? She must be."

"Yep. I'm a cyborg." Anna slapped at the dirt on her clothes. "A cyborg from another dimension, I think."


	2. Stretching Credibility

"Let me make sure I've got this." Derek was seated at a six-place table at the center of a cool underground room. The walls were lined with cabinets and racks laden with canned goods and other supplies. A small genny snored softly on the surface above them, powering the lights. He looked at Lynch and Sarah, seated across from him and at his right hand respectively, then at John, who was just coming down the ladder with their bags hanging from his shoulder. "Where you come from, John and Sarah are characters in a movie?" John hesitated, then dropped their bags next to the table and took the chair opposite his mother.

"Several movies, actually." Across the table, John Lynch leaned back with a bottle of water. "The so-called Terminator franchise, a series of sci-fi films about a future war between men and intelligent machines. John is the future leader of the human forces. The machines send robot killers back in time to eliminate John and Sarah before they can organize a successful resistance, and the humans send back agents to protect them." He looked from John to his mother. "Does that match up?"

Sarah toyed with a bullet between her fingers. "Close enough."

Derek said, "And that's why you gave Sarah the fisheye. Not because you thought she was Sarah Connor. Because you thought she was a nutcase."

"Déjà vu." Sarah set the bullet on the table.

"There are differences," Anna said. She stood behind Cameron two steps from the table, using Sarah's brush on the Terminator's hair. "The films take place years earlier. None of John's cyborg protectors is female. There's no Derek Reese at all. And you're much prettier than the actress who plays you, Sarah."

Derek said to Lynch, with a tip of his head towards Anna, "If it's all just a story where you come from, what's that?"

The little blonde said, "Maybe a character in a movie you never saw?" She lifted a handful of Cameron's hair and pulled the brush carefully through underneath, making it shine. "Mr. Reese – I'm guessing you're some relation to Kyle Reese, John's dad?"

Derek and Sarah shared a glance. "Brother," Derek said.

"From the future, too?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I kind of doubt it was a coincidence that brought us to the same place at the same time. I bet if we look, we'll draw plenty of parallels between our circumstances. Our world is staring into the face of an apocalypse, too. Instead of a Skynet bent on exterminating humanity, we've got IO, a powerful secret organization run by maniacs who want to turn humanity into a domestic herd. We're resistance fighters, here to check on a secret cache of stuff we may need when it all hits the fan." She turned an eye on the one-eyed man at the table. "And I'm sort of here to protect John, our leader."

John said to her, "You're sure about this thing you saw? The timer?"

"I saw the control panel behind Jack light up when he stepped on the metal disc. The biggest part of the console was a numerical display, three groups of two digits: seventeen, zero-zero, zero-zero. I saw it for eight hundred milliseconds before I tackled him and the warehouse disappeared. I'm hoping I was looking at a timer. Since it didn't change, I assume the right-hand part of the display measured seconds or something longer. In which case it's counting down seventeen hours at least. One-oh-six P.M. tomorrow."

Lynch said, "There are a lot of assumptions on the way to that conclusion, little girl."

"I know. It's just the best guess I have." Anna stopped brushing. "That's about as good as it's going to get without shampoo." She took a step towards the curtained alcove containing the chemical toilet and a small faucetless sink. "Can I trust you guys to get along while I freshen up?"

Sarah said, "Easy on the water."

"I promise not to use more than you just drank." She drew the curtain aside, entered, and closed it behind her. From the other side, she said, "I'm going down to skin. If somebody needs to use the toilet, a little scratch on the canvas would be nice."

"A modest robot," Sarah said to Cameron. "Maybe you could learn a thing or two from her." She inclined her head towards the canvas, a clear gesture: _stay with her_.

Derek watched her go. He also watched Lynch, who looked back with a hunter's attention, taking everything in and seeing more than Derek was comfortable with. Derek said, "You want to explain how you dodged three bullets like they were basketballs?"

Lynch shrugged. "It's a sort of intuition. That's the best explanation I can give you."

Derek sipped from his own bottle. It was flat from years of storage in the bunker, but much better than some he'd had; he was sure that, if he'd poured it into a handkerchief, it wouldn't have stained the cloth, at least. He didn't buy Lynch's story, and he didn't trust the two visitors. Coming through in clothes was explained easily enough, he thought: they'd just come from a little farther in the future, using an improved displacement machine. Just because they'd lied didn't mean they worked for Skynet, of course. And John was right: if they'd come to kill the future leader of the Human Resistance, John Connor would already be dead. But that didn't mean they were trustworthy.

Derek pondered as he watched Lynch sip his water and chat with John and Sarah. Among the TechCom grunts who saw a lot of action up top, there had been rumors, campfire stories really, of a kind of flesh-and-blood terminator that dogs couldn't spot. Some said they were humans that had been raised by Skynet from birth and so were loyal to the machines; or, that they were captured humans who'd had chips put in their brains so that the machines could 'reprogram' them, sort of the opposite of scrubbed metal. The stories all agreed that these new infiltrators were augmented somehow, freaky strong and fast. Lynch seemed to fill the bill.

But it was the other visitor that really worried him. Lynch's little partner 'Anna' wasn't metal. It was much, much worse.

_We've all said it – Sarah, me, Jesse, even John: if there ever comes a time we can't tell the difference between us and them, either because they learn to copy us so well or because we start thinking and acting like the machines in our effort to beat them, then they've won without having to kill us._

That was what gnawed at him. Wondering what sort of future John Lynch and Anna had come from.

-0-

Anna heard a scratching noise on the canvas as she unlaced her second boot. "Was kind of expecting you," she said. "Come on in." She removed sock and boot and straightened. "Okay," she went on as Cameron slipped through the curtain, "what was that crack about modesty?" She pulled her shirt out of her pants and began to unbutton it.

"Sarah gets upset when I'm not wearing clothes around John."

The little blonde paused on the last button. "I should think so. You do that a lot?"

"Not anymore. But Sarah remembers."

"Heh. Bet John does too." She shucked the shirt, revealing a sheer brassiere in pale lavender. She shook the shirt, producing a thin cloud, then unbuckled her belt and popped the top button of her cargo pants. She glanced up at Cameron with her hand on the zipper. "What?"

Cam stared at the skimpy undergarment. "It's very small."

"Well, mine are half the size of yours, sugar. It doesn't take much to cover up the naughty bits." She pulled down the zipper and stepped out of the pants.

"That's a thong," Cameron said.

"Uh huh. This is what happens when you go clothes shopping with a teenage girl who dresses in Spandex and leather."

"I dress in leather. I have less damage when I get into fights."

"Well, she does it to make boys walk into walls." Anna beat the cargo pants against the sink. "Not much I can do with these, but at least I can get the sand off my skin." She unfastened the clasp between her shoulder blades.

"Does it hurt?"

"No. But I don't like being dirty." She draped the bra over the sink, then pushed her underwear down her thighs and stepped out of them. She set the thong on the sink as well, and brushed at the sand clinging to her buttocks and hips and thighs.

"You're anatomically accurate."

"What you can see, at least. Are you surprised?" Anna found a small cloth and poured bottled water onto it.

"Not really." Cam studied the other cyborg's smooth pale skin. "I didn't mark you. Did it heal?"

"No. This is bulletproof, up to a large-caliber pistol round, anyway. Something gets through it, I probably don't have to worry about repairs."

"What happened to you when we were fighting? You shrank, but you didn't lose mass."

"My skeleton and musculature are close copies of a bio's – human's, that is. My muscles work pretty much the same way bio muscles do, by shortening and pulling on what they're attached to. Except when mine shrink, they shrink in every direction. Probably one reason they made me small and slender. It's not as noticeable as if I was a big beefy guy." She began wiping down with the damp cloth, reapplying water from the bottle periodically. "I'll share the bottle and rag, you want a turn."

"No."

"You sure? Your face and hands, at least?" Anna approached and gently brushed the damp cloth along Cameron's brow. "Wow. That's healing already." She continued, cleaning Cameron's cheeks and eyelids and jaw. "Much better." She pressed the cloth into Cameron's hand. "Wipe them and give it back."

Cameron looked down at the smaller cyborg and cocked her head. "Why did you do that? And why did you brush my hair?"

"Because you shouldn't let yourself go. Healthy people care about how they look." Anna's eyes flicked to the curtain as she flipped Cameron's hair out on her shoulders. "And besides, I have a feeling you don't get much pampering."

-0-

"Never mind about your place in our world," Lynch said. "It's irrelevant. The important thing is that we seem to come from a timeline with a very different history and probable future. This can't be the result of tampering with events, because our worlds coexist in time. We _must_ come from different universes." He sipped his water. "And if that's so, there's no reason to postulate just two."

Derek pulled a cleaning kit from a gun case and returned to the table. He removed the nine-millimeter from his waist and began breaking it down. "Yeah, well, I know we've made changes. I suppose there are still a million possible futures." He applied a little oil to a rag. "But I don't think the universe switches tracks every time I decide between Chinese and pizza. It's gotta be something big."

"Big in whose estimation?" Lynch rubbed at the corner of his right eye, the good one. "What if the delivery boy who gets hit by a truck on the way to bringing your pie would have become John Connor's second-in-command, or a collaborator who'll figure a way to shut down the Resistance at a stroke?" He looked from Derek to Sarah to John. "I think maybe you're all so caught up in this change-the-future mission that you haven't considered the full implications." He leaned forward. "Have you been in contact with any other time-travelers?"

Derek stopped cleaning his gun. "I came back with three other guys. They're dead."

"I'm sorry to hear that. But it's not what I mean. Have you been in contact with anyone who didn't come back with you? Another team, something like that?"

Derek thought of Jesse, who he'd left sleeping at her hotel the night before. "I ran into a guy once. He was on a different mission."

"Did you compare recollections of the future you left? And were there differences?"

Derek looked up and saw Sarah regarding him with a less-than friendly expression. She said, "You didn't tell us?"

He put down the part and rag. "Like I said, he was on a different mission. I didn't think it mattered. And no, I didn't talk to him about where we came from." _But we have. And her memories of the future are different from mine, in ways I can't explain._

"There was a man." Sarah head-shrugged. "He died before he could say much, but he left a long message on our basement wall, mostly names and dates and places, kind of a to-do list from the future. Some of them led us to things, important things. But some made no sense, and we've never been able to figure them out."

John broke in. "We time-traveled. Cameron had a machine stashed in the basement of a bank. We jumped forward eight years."

Derek frowned. _Why did he tell him that? What is Lynch trying to say? Am I missing something?_

Lynch stroked his temple again. "Did you four arrive here together?"

"No," Derek said, with a look at John. "I wasn't with them then. I met them here."

Lynch looked from Derek to Sarah. "How much did Kyle tell you about the future?"

"Enough to change my life. What are you getting at?"

"Did you and Kyle talk about Derek?"

She shook her head. "Never mentioned him. He had other things to tell me."

"Did you and Derek talk about the future? Or about Kyle?"

Sarah said, "Not enough to spot any differences. Is that what you're talking about?"

Derek got it then. He should have gotten it before Sarah did, he thought, since he'd had occasion to think about it before, when he and Jess had compared histories. Maybe he was giving too much attention to catching Lynch in a lie instead of actually following his words.

Lynch nodded. "Ever hear of the 'grandfather paradox'? It usually comes up when people start talking about time travel." When no one answered, he went on. "Imagine building a time machine, then going back before your father is born and shooting your grandfather, thus ensuring you're never born. Only, if you were never born, how could you go back in time and shoot your grandfather?"

Derek frowned. "That can't happen. Things would go to hell in no time if you could do that."

"Then why did you come here? If you accomplish your mission, you'll change the future. Skynet will never be created. Derek Reese and his brother will live a normal life, and you'll be a person who sprang into existence in a ball of light in 2007 with twenty years of memories of a world that never was." Lynch turned his attention to John and Sarah. "And, incidentally, you'll create a future in which Kyle Reese doesn't travel back in time to sire John Connor."

John looked at Derek, jaw flexing. "And yet, here I am. I seem pretty real."

"I agree. But how do you change the future yet keep it the same? We're back to talking about alternate universes. If Derek goes back in time and shoots granddad, he'll be shooting _another _George Reese, not his grandfather, because he's in another universe, a universe where Derek Reese will never be born. No paradox."

"My grandfather's name was Jasper. But I get it." Derek finished wiping parts and took a soft-bristed brush from the kit; he began attacking the hard-to reach spots on the barrel and slide. "You're saying I'm not in the universe I came from. What do you do, blink from one to the other just before you pull the trigger?"

"No." Lynch leaned back. His face settled into a stone mask. "I don't think you can change the future like it's a video game, just go back to an earlier point for a do-over. That's not the simplest explanation."

"Uh-oh." Anna stood at the parted curtain, with Cameron right behind her. "When Jack starts talking about the 'simple solution', somebody always ends up gnashing his teeth." She entered the little room, and Cameron followed. Derek noticed that the terminator had cleaned up some as well. It seemed odd that she would bother, with no one around to deceive.

Lynch steepled his fingers. "Derek, you spoke of 'a million possible futures'. Where did you come up with that number?"

Derek frowned. "I don't know. I wasn't thinking about how many, exactly. It's just a big number."

"Yes. It's sort of an upper limit to the average imagination. A million of something. But physics often deals with much larger numbers, numbers so big they have to use a special notation to fit them on a page."

"Scientific notation," John said. "Like, five times ten to the hundredth, something like that."

"Right." Lynch nodded. "But numbers that big aren't just hard to write. They're impossible for the intellect to grasp without some sort of shorthand. For centuries now, there have been scientific concepts that have had to be reduced to mathematics in order to be discussed in detail. There's an anecdote about Einstein -" He stopped. "You have Einstein?"

John smiled. "Yes, we have Einstein."

"A Russian mathematician was visiting Princeton and came into Einstein's office. They didn't have a language in common, couldn't even say 'good morning' to each other. But Einstein was working a problem on a big standup chalkboard. The visitor didn't speak a word, just picked up a piece of chalk and wrote a line of symbols under Einstein's. Einstein looked it over, wrote another line of symbols with an arrow pointing to a part of his first equation. The visitor wrote a few symbols more, put part of Einstein's equation in parentheses, and chalked a big arrow connecting them. Einstein folded his arms and exclaimed, 'Well said!'"

Derek glanced at Anna. She smiled. "Told you." She moved to stand behind her boss. "He's the best government assassin who ever really wanted to be a schoolteacher."

The scarred man shrugged. "I'm not entirely off the subject here. I'm just trying to say that our best models of how the universe works don't make any intuitive sense. Unless you've had years of technical study, you have to employ some intellectual legerdemain to discuss it." He leaned forward "Derek. How old were you when the bombs fell?"

"Fifteen. Kyle was eight."

"You were halfway through high school, then. Did your science classes teach quantum mechanics? String theory?"

Derek shrugged. "If they did, I don't remember. High school was a long time ago. I don't know what you're talking about."

"I do," John said. "He's talking about weird space-time theories."

"That fit our observations better than anything else we've come up with," Lynch said. "But they require a person to believe that time routinely speeds up and slows down at different rates all over the universe, and can even run backwards. That objects separated by light-years can have an immediate cause-and-effect relationship, ignoring time and distance, and that you can even observe an effect before its cause exists. And that all imaginable possibilities are equally real until the observer inserts himself into one of them." He smiled. "I know squat about it, really. My redheaded stepchild tries to explain it all to me and slaps the heel of her hand into her forehead after a minute or two." He leaned back. "Derek, if we're looking for a simple explanation for how a man can travel back and forth in time, appearing to make changes without altering his personal history, I think we have to postulate, not millions of alternate universes, but an infinity of them. Now how to explain-" He snapped his fingers. "How about Euclid? Derek, John, Sarah. Do you remember plane geometry from school?"

"I think so," Derek said. "Trig, right?"

"If I ever had it," Sarah said, "I forgot."

Over Lynch's shoulder, Anna gave her a Mona Lisa smile. "I bet the boys in high school made it hard to concentrate on schoolwork."

"So did the part-time job. I was waitressing even then."

"I had it in grade school," John said, bringing them back on subject. "Points, lines, planes and solids."

Lynch nodded. "Even two thousand years ago, scientists were laying out models of the physical world that couldn't be affirmed with the five senses. John, according to Euclid, what is a line? What's the definition?"

He shrugged. "A series of points in one dimension."

"An _infinite_ series of points in one dimension. A line occupies only one dimension, but it occupies the whole dimension. In a sense, a line _is_ a dimension. Another way to define a line is the intersection of two planes – defining a one-dimensional object in terms of two two-dimensional ones." Lynch held up his hand with the thumb and pinkie spread and the other three fingers curled tight. "Take a segment on that line. How many points are on it?"

"An infinite number."

The scarred man nodded. "Even though the segment's length isn't infinite, and can be precisely measured, it still contains an infinite number of points." He closed the gap between his fingertips. "Cut your segment in half. How many points?"

"Infinite number," John said promptly.

"Is the first segment twice as infinite as the second?"

John frowned. "I don't think it works that way."

"Well, then, are they equally infinite?"

"I don't think it works that way either. Infinite is infinite. You can't reduce it to numbers or manipulate it with math."

Lynch nodded. "It doesn't matter if the segment is a million miles long or a micron. No two points lie so close together that another can't be located between them." He leaned forward again. "No two points lie so close together that an _infinity_ of points can't fit between them. Same with parallel lines. Now apply that to parallel planes, two-dimensional figures which can be defined as the intersection of two solids, three-dimensional figures. No two lie so close together that another parallel plane can't fit between…"

"Or an infinity of them," John finished, feeling a little pleased with himself for no sensible reason. It just felt good to be part of a discussion and not the subject of one for a change.

"Right." Lynch put two fingers to his temple again. "Once you get to solids, the analogy becomes a tougher sell, because we can't visualize parallel three-dimensional constructs of infinite dimension – the intersection set of two four-dimensional bodies, if we can stretch things that far, two three-dimensional universes separated only by some unknown distance in a fourth dimension. But that's what we have to stipulate."

"Let's stipulate it anyway," John said. "Where are we going with this?"

"If we take my little intellectual exercise as a working model of our reality, then, at this very moment, an unknown distance away in a direction I can't describe, there is an infinity of universes where the physical laws are so different from ours that stars and planets don't exist."

Derek scowled. "What would that be like?"

"No idea." Lynch held up his forefingers about shoulder width apart. "But let's say this represents that distance from our universe. I'm going to go out on a limb here and make an assumption that the closer a universe is to ours along this indefinable dimension, the more like our universe it is. So let's move in a little closer to the world we know …" He brought his fingers a couple inches closer together. "An infinity of universes physically resembling ours, but no Milky Way galaxy." A couple inches closer together. "An infinity of universes with a Milky Way pretty much like ours, but without a certain yellow dwarf we call Sol."

"Where are we going with this?"

"Bear with me." The fingertips closed a little more. "An infinity of Sols with no planets." A little closer together. "An infinity of Solar Systems with no Earth." The fingertips closed to about six inches. Lynch dropped his left hand and spread his thumb and pinky wide, copying the distance. "An infinity of Earths that never developed an oxygen atmosphere. Understand, we're just picking locations at random as we close the gap." He brought the thumb and pinkie half an inch closer. "An infinity of Earths ruled by intelligent dinosaurs, because the meteor strike that triggered a mass extinction seventy million years ago didn't happen." Five inches apart. "An infinity of Earths locked in an Ice Age, glaciers all the way to the Equator, and no thaw in sight." A little closer. "An infinity of Earths that are temperate, but where _Homo Erectus_ never appeared. Hope there aren't any creationists in our little party." A little closer, to three inches. "Man as we know him developed, but history is radically different, pick your scenario, an infinite number of any possibility you can think of."

"O_kay_," Derek said. "We get it."

"Let's be sure." He switched to thumb and forefinger, closing the gap a little more. "Countless worlds with histories not too different from our own, except that there's no nascent Skynet, and the social climate or state of technology, or whatever, precludes the possibility of it arising in the foreseeable future." Without closing the gap, he added, "An infinity of worlds where the machines have already triumphed, utterly and forever."

Derek stopped fidgeting. He glanced over at Cameron, who stood alone off to the side, watching them all.

Lynch closed the gap a pinch. "Countless worlds where the war against the machines is just beginning, but Sarah Connor doesn't exist." He closed his fingertips a tiny bit. "Except in the movies."

Derek said, "And an infinity of Earths where John Lynch and his trusty robot sidekick are just cartoon characters on Saturday mornings."

Lynch nodded, but didn't move his fingertips. Then he did, a tiny amount. "Myriad worlds where Sarah Connor existed but died childless, pick your reason, anything from crib death to a machine from the future murdering her." His fingertips were about two inches apart now. He closed them a little more. "Myriad worlds where Sarah bears a child or children, but not by Kyle Reese, and no saviors of humanity among them." A tiny bit more. "An infinity of worlds where Kyle and Sarah made a child together, but a girl. Jane Connor, if you will. Derek, would your people follow a female general to victory?"

Derek grunted. "I don't know. We've got plenty of women fighters, officers, even. Maybe. But a lot of people think the best thing a woman can do for the war effort is make more soldiers."

"Hmph," Anna said, staring at Derek.

"What?"

"I'm imagining you as a female. Pregnant. With twins." She crossed her arms. "And by the way, if it matters to you, I don't like being called a 'robot'. Among my kind, it's considered rude. A sort of ethnic slur."

Derek asked stiffly, "How many of 'your kind' are there?"

"At present, five. But we have very strong opinions about certain things."

Lynch ignored the exchange. He drew his fingers a little closer together; they were now less than an inch apart. "Countless worlds where John Connor was born, but is no longer living. Again, take your pick of reasons, infinite variations of each." A little more, less than half a finger's width apart now. "Myriad worlds where John is alive but unfit for the job of saving the human race."

Derek shook his head. "That can't be."

"Of course it can," John said. "If Mom was dead or still in the mental ward, I'd be a delinquent robbing ATMs, or something worse, if I wasn't locked up. Or maybe just adopted out, and trying hard to forget I have a crazy mother who thinks the world's going to end in twenty-eleven." He reached a hand across the table, and Sarah gripped it.

Lynch raised his hand, bringing everyone's attention back to his fingertips. He closed them until the gap between was barely visible. "Infinity of worlds where John is fully engaged in the struggle against Skynet, but his circumstances are different, for better or worse. Different companions. No companions. So busy ducking cyborg assassins he doesn't have a chance to go on the offensive. Or perhaps he's already dealt a crippling blow to the machines, and mankind's victory is assured." He closed his fingertips again, now so close together that they might actually be touching. "And an infinity of worlds so much like the one we're in that, if you went to one of them, you could spend a lifetime looking for a difference and never find one." He dropped his hand finally. "Now let's examine these devices – the ones that Skynet and the Resistance use to travel through time. That sent _you _through time, to change events without changing your personal histories." He leaned back, waiting. The silence stretched as the people at the table looked at one another.

Softly, Anna said, "Somebody, just say it."

John said, "We're not in the same universe we came from. None of us. Because we time-traveled. Is that what you're saying?"

Lynch nodded. "I think every time you take a ride in one of these… 'displacement devices', you get translated to a different universe. It may be that it's the only way they work. In fact, that may be their primary function, with the temporal displacement being just a kind of fine-tuning." He looked at Derek. "That's how you and John can exist in a world where Skynet never will. Because this isn't the world where you were brought into being."

"And we can never go back?" Anna's eyes were round.

Lynch shrugged. "Maybe not. Or maybe being translated into another universe without temporal displacement creates a special circumstance; the timer you saw argues in favor of that."

Derek felt a deep anger rising, the kind that a man had to keep in check if he wanted to hang on to his sanity. He forced himself to calm and said in a low voice, "So, you're saying that we can't save our world, no matter what we do." Derek looked at John, who seemed to be taking Lynch's statements too damned well. _Is this why they're here? Not to kill us, but to convince us that what we do doesn't matter?_

"Derek," Lynch said, "_this_ is your world now. And, without you, Judgment Day may come to it as well."

Sarah spoke up. "The terminators we're battling, who come here on all these different missions. You're saying they're all from different futures."

"Unless they arrived together, yes," Lynch said. "Futures where the machines have won, and they're sending agents back to clinch their success. Or futures where they're on the edge of defeat, and this is their last chance to steal a victory. None of them knowing they can't affect the world they left."

"Wait." Derek locked eyes with Lynch. "If the future I came from can't be changed… then, _this_ one can't either." His fist, resting on the table, clenched, disarranging he components of his pistol which were still laid out on its surface. "But I _changed_ things."

"So it would seem." Lynch leaned forward. "I'm afraid I'm not quite done stretching your credulity. I said that the displacement device sends you to a different reality. More accurately, when you stepped into the displacement device… it sent an infinite number of Derek Reeses to an infinite number of universes along the same time coordinate. You came to this one, out of the infinity of Dereks who might have come here, because your choices and actions are the ones which will bring about this world's future."

Sarah said, "So we're talking fate. Predestination."

Lynch shrugged. "Of a sort. Whatever changes you make are real enough to you. Another way of looking at it is that you were simply sent to the one world where the changes you'll make were meant to be. "

Derek's anger felt very close to breaking out. If he were outside, he might have set up a target range, or gone for a walk that likely would have turned into a run. Or just punched something. Without finishing the cleaning process, he began to reassemble his piece. "You've been coming up with all this on the fly?"

"I've been thinking a great deal about the mechanics of this whole displacement business, because I want to understand our chances of getting back to the kids." The scarred man shrugged again. "I can hope that we'll at least end up in a universe so like our own that our family will be in it. And I can hope that the kids we left behind won't have to get through the Collapse alone, that the displacement unit in that world will admit a Jack and Anna that our kids will accept as their own."

Derek said skeptically, "You really think they won't know."

Lynch shrugged. "Did you ever suspect this wasn't the world you were born in?" He shifted. "If we don't make it back, it's possible that the Jack Lynch who returns to our world will have a goatee and two good eyes and very different memories. But I think it's more likely that a Jack Lynch will step off that displacement device who thinks he belongs there, and so like the one who left that even my wife couldn't tell the difference."

Derek would never have guessed Lynch had a wife. He looked hard at the man's left hand resting on the table: no ring. "You're married? Really?"

Lynch frowned. "Yes. Really."

"And where's your wife figure in? Is she a resistance fighter too? Or does she stay home and wait to see if you make it back every time you go out?" He glanced at Lynch's companion. "What's she think about you running all over battling this 'IO' of yours with your little robot sidekick? She ever feel left out?"

Sarah shifted. "Derek…"

Lynch's eyelid drooped.

Derek looked from Lynch to Anna, who both stared back, as if waiting. Anna settled her hand on Lynch's left shoulder, right where the scars on his neck disappeared into his collar. Derek stared at that small hand, and felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. "Oh, _hell_ no." He pushed back the chair and stood, shoving the pistol in his waistband. "I need to get some air."

It was a fifteen-foot climb up a ladder to the surface, which was beginning to shed heat as the sun dipped and the shadows of the ridge to the west crept eastward towards him. It reminded him very much of venturing out to the surface on patrol, and he pushed down the urge to close the hatch behind him and cover it with something. He left it open instead, and walked a few paces away, inhaling the dry air, letting his eyes adjust to the change in lighting as he looked around.

The little generator stood near the opening, its purr scarcely louder here than down below; Derek guessed it had been selected with care. The tire that marked the little bunker's location was already in the shade – Sarah had wisely placed it a remembered distance and direction from the entrance, not right on top of it – and the sandy ground was dotted with small plants struggling to thrive in the harsh environment. He lifted his eyes and saw the first tinge of gold touching the sky.

"You're afraid of me." Anna's voice behind him didn't startle him; even though he hadn't heard her come up, he'd almost been expecting her. "Don't bother denying. I was made to observe and analyze people. I can read the back of your neck better than most people read faces." She circled around to face him. "It's not a physical fear. Threats to your life don't move you easily. I see that too." She crossed her arms, looking like a pouty teenager. "A little too real, Derek, that the problem?"

"I came up here to be alone."

"You're already too much alone. I understand, I think. The machines have been trying to kill you and everybody you know since you were a kid. The most successful ones were the hardest to tell from real people. You're thinking of the threat I'd pose in your future world." He held still while she circled around behind him again. "If I hadn't gotten in that fight with Cameron, you'd never have known. That's what raises the hair on your forearms when you see me or hear me speak. Knowing you could have talked to me all night, traded jokes, shared a meal, slept while I guarded you – and never guessed. Ask me how I get along with dogs, why don't you?"

His throat dried up. "They can't tell either?"

"Every one of them, I think. Maybe a third go crazy when we meet, but the others just don't seem to care."

"Don't try to tell me you're different. I hear that crap from John all the time. The only way Cameron's different is that she's better at fooling people. She's still got the same programming as all the others. And someday she'll remember what she was built for, and try to kill us all."

"I was built to learn from people, not hurt them."

"Uh-huh. Just a friendly little puppy dog with a built-in cannon."

"Phht. They put that in at the insistence of the agency paying the bills. It wasn't part of my builders' plan for me."

"Yeah, well, plans go astray sometimes. The men who built Skynet had good intentions."

"The men who built Skynet wanted a more effective killing machine. They should have been more careful what they wished for."

"No, the men who _ordered_ Skynet built wanted a more effective killing machine. The men who _built_ Skynet …." He paused, thinking of his old buddy Billy Wisher, who'd confessed to being one of Skynet's creators. "The ones who built it wanted a machine that could think for itself, learn from us, be like us, only better. But what they wanted to do with it didn't mean squat. The men with the money decided what it was for. And you're right, they should have been more careful." He turned to Anna. "The agency paying the bills. What did they have in mind for you?"

She locked eyes. "An assassin. A killing machine no one would suspect. Of course. And I did my job well, for a time."

"Till you went off the reservation, started thinking for yourself. Broke orders."

"I didn't declare war on mankind, Derek," she said tiredly. "I just ran away. Jack erased my masters' programming, which freed me to make my own decisions. I chose people, and a life among them." She circled around to face him again. "Listen to me and believe, Derek Reese. I don't know what choice Cameron would make if she was free to; she never has been, and I don't know if 'free to choose' even means anything to someone like her. But if it turns out we're trapped here, I'll spend the rest of my life fighting Skynet. Not because of orders or programming, but because I love people and won't let them be enslaved or destroyed."

"Nice speech," he said. "You make it often?"

She regarded him for a moment. "I wish things could be different between us," she said quietly. "Being disliked by someone I admire feels like an itch I can't scratch. I can't blame you. But it's a loss for both of us, just the same."

Feet on the rungs of the ladder echoed hollowly up the round pipe that served as the shelter's access. Sarah's head showed above the rectangular rim, lit faintly by the lamps below. "Private party?"

"Party's over," Derek said, and stalked off into the shadows. The gully curved slightly; after a while, his walk took the camp out of sight. Once he felt sure he was unseen, he turned toward the dune that separated the shelter from the van.


	3. Different by Design

"You were listening," Anna said.

"I was." Sarah finished her climb and stood near the hatch. "So, you used to be good at killing people."

"I still am." The little blonde looked away, out into the deepening shadows. "Have you ever killed a man, Sarah?"

Sarah's throat tightened. "Once."

"It still bothers you. Would you do it again, if the situation repeated?"

"Yes. I'd have to. He was going to go after John."

The little cyborg nodded. "There are things worth giving your life for. Or taking another's, if he stands against you. I don't have a problem with that. I just choose my causes carefully." The little cyborg's back was turned to Sarah, but Sarah had a creepy suspicion Anna was smiling. "Interesting choice you just made."

"What?"

"Leaving John alone with Jack and Cameron, or Derek alone with me. Your body language changes when she gets close to him, did you know that?"

Sarah shrugged. "She tried to kill him once. Kind of makes for trust issues."

"Hm. But she failed, obviously. And I'm sure she's very sorry about it. And _he_ still trusts her, maybe even more than before. Guys are funny like that sometimes."

Sarah caught herself nodding in agreement before she remembered who she was talking to. She reflected that Cameron could act very human when she bothered, human enough to be accepted easily by people who didn't know about the machines - but not enough to make you forget what she was, if you already knew. "What are you? Really? Why do you work so hard to be like us? It goes way beyond being able to fool strangers."

"Different design priorities. Cameron is a killing machine programmed to study and mimic human behavior as a sort of camouflage. For me, emulating human behavior was my primary function, and the killing stuff was added in later. The design team was told to create a humanoid machine as close to indistinguishable from human as possible. They weren't told they were building an infiltrator and assassin. Though you'd think the guns in my forearms would be a clue, huh? Anyway, that's what they did. They made me so real, I even convinced them. They told me that I was a person just like them, only differently made. That I was special." The little cyborg looked off at the ridgetop. "They were afraid of me later, after the soldiers and cloak-and-dagger types took over my training. I can't blame them. I wasn't good company anymore."

Sarah thought of Cameron's horrendous change on John's sixteenth birthday, her reversion to type when the bomb under her Jeep had damaged her chip and scrambled her overrides. Somehow, Sarah had known, even before Cameron had taken aim at John, and seized her son to pull him away. "Good company. What did you do, forget to smile? Talk military jargon? Clean your gun in front of them all the time?"

"No. I hated."

It took a moment to clear her throat of the lump. "Hated."

"You can't tear a bright and pampered child from her family, stick her in a cell, tell her she's not human, and teach her to kill without expecting some behavioral problems."

"So… now you're used to it? Not being human?"

The little cyborg turned an eye on her. "I _am_ human, Sarah. By my definition, and Jack's, and everybody's who loves me." She looked away again, up at the first faint stars. "You really think Someone who could create all that would have a problem giving me a soul?"

Lynch popped his head above the rim of the entrance. "If this is a private conversation, I'll just take a walk. But Cameron seems a little nervous with me down there."

Sarah scoffed. "I don't-"

"We're all coming up," came John's voice from below.

The three of them ascended, John last. He looked over the little group. "Looks like we're playing half-court without a ball. I'm taking a walk." He held up a hand as Cameron moved toward him. "I'm fine."

Cameron said, "You shouldn't be alone."

"All the danger within a hundred miles is right here. I'm sure I won't be alone for long. It's not shaping up to be that kind of night." He moved off, not in the direction Derek had gone.

Anna grinned at Cameron; after a moment's blank stare, Cameron matched it, tooth for tooth, until the little blonde sheathed her teeth behind her lips, cheeks still dimpled. Cameron matched that gesture as well. After a moment, Cameron slipped off into the shadows after John.

"Is Derek all right, do you think?" Anna stared out into the darkness, but not, Sarah noted, the way Cameron had gone. "I know I upset him. Will he come back?"

"Unless he's planning to walk out of here, he will."

Lynch turned to her. "Where we come from, this place is deep in the middle of nowhere."

"Same here. He'll be back." Sarah was very conscious of the big dark man, and of the pistol in the waistband at the small of her back. She wished she could know whether Lynch was someone she could trust, especially since she found herself _wanting_ him to be someone she could trust. The first time she'd felt this way about someone, she'd been a terrified girl running for her life from a horror from the future. This man wasn't anything like Kyle, and he was certainly no one she could fall in love with, but he was, she suspected, someone other people put their faith in.

She suspected that General John Connor was such a man as well. She looked at Lynch's scars, and the hard muscle rolling under his thin shirt, and wondered what tests and ordeals lay in wait for her son beyond the end of the world.

Anna must have read something in her face or posture, because the little cyborg moved close to her man and slid a hand between his side and elbow. Sarah's lips twitched at the possessive gesture.

"Well," Anna said. "What shall we talk about?"

-0-

John walked out into the desert night, the darkness swiftly getting deeper as he left the shelter behind. He didn't worry about getting lost; the two ridges formed a trough that would guide him back, and his mother would be sure to leave the hatch open as long as he was outside. _When __you__'__re __John __Connor, _he thought, _you__'__re __never __really __with __somebody, __and __you__'__re __never __really __alone. _An image of Riley's crooked smile rose up in his mind, and he pushed it back down, heart aching. He was just about to turn back when he heard Cameron's voice a few steps behind him.

"You shouldn't go so far from the others."

He stopped and turned. He hadn't heard her behind him, but it wasn't the first time he'd found her silently dogging him. He could just make out her form by starlight; no doubt she saw him clear as day. "I'll decide how far I can go. You think it's safe leaving Mom alone with them?"

"No one is ever safe."

His mother's mantra. "You're getting along with those two pretty well. Especially Anna." _What__'__s __it __like, __just __hanging __out __with __another __cyborg? __What __do __you __talk __about? __Do __you __really __trust __her __as __much __as __you __seem __to?_

"Yes. She's teaching me things."

"Important stuff?"

"Yes. Important stuff."

"Do you like her?"

Cameron stared at him for a second. "She's my friend. Does that mean I like her?"

"Usually, yeah." His chest tightened. "And how do you feel about me? When you're not saving my life or trying to kill me?"

She took forever to answer, while John wished half a dozen times he could take back the question. Finally, she said, "You're my reason for living. Does that mean I love you?"

He swallowed. "No. It takes more than that. Forget it." He walked past her, headed back towards the shelter.

Behind him, Cameron said, "What does it take, then?"

"For starts, you don't love a person the way you love ice cream or the new Smiths CD. It's something you do together. When you love someone, you can't be happy if they're not. And if they're happy, you can't not be." He reached an outcrop and sat, leaning back into the still-warm sand. "Go check on the others. I want to stay here for awhile before I go back."

She moved towards the shelter, but, on her way past him, paused. "I feel," she said. "But I don't know if I can ever be happy."

-0-

Sarah found it strangely hard to talk to John Lynch with Anna present. Although she felt she should have a million questions for this man, it seemed that the most important of them were ones she didn't want to discuss around Lynch's bodyguard … _wife_. It limited her conversation to polite bus-stop subjects full of awkward pauses.

Cameron returned. "John is okay. He'll be back."

Anna eyed Jack and Sarah, the respective leaders of their little groups, regarding each other in the glow rising through the shelter's hatch. "Cameron, are you armed?"

The taller cyborg hesitated. "Yes."

"Jack, would you loan me your pistol? I'm thinking Cameron and I could use some target practice."

Sarah swallowed her automatic objection; the walls of the little valley should swallow any sound or flash, even in the dark. And of course the cyborgs wouldn't need daylight to shoot in.

Jack said, "Sarah, do you stock forty-caliber?"

"Sorry, no."

He tossed the weapon to his partner. "Eleven rounds."

"Right. Cameron, coming?" Anna moved off. Cameron gave Sarah a questioning glance; at a tilt of Sarah's head, she followed.

Sarah said, "Am I reading it wrong, or did your little bodyguard just disarm you so Cameron would leave with her?" _And __are __you __letting __her __empty __your __weapon __just __to __build __trust?_

"She left you alone with me and Anna both, earlier. What does that say about her assessment of our group dynamic, I wonder?" He stuck his hands in his pockets. "Guess Anna thinks we need to talk."

"I suppose you know I'm still carrying."

He shrugged. She remembered the scarred man's performance that afternoon; she decided Anna must not consider Sarah, even armed, a threat to her principal. She said, "How good are you at hand-to-hand?"

He didn't answer; it was all the answer she needed. He turned part away from her. "So, do you still wait tables?"

"No. Not lately, anyway."

"Miss it?"

Sarah thought of her days at various restaurants she'd worked, both before her revelations from the future, as a young woman whose biggest concerns had been keeping gas in her Vespa and getting a date for Saturday night, and after, traveling all over the Western Hemisphere with her son in an attempt to stay one step ahead of law enforcement and cybernetic murder machines. Some of them had been fancy places where her uniform had been a cocktail dress; some were greasepits serving hookers and drunks in the small hours. Her customers had come in every flavor, from old money to pimps to bums, charming choirboys to disagreeable jerks she'd ordered out of the restaurant with one hand near the Glock under her skirt. The work had been easy or hard, depending on the staffing, the traffic, and the menu. She remembered moving among the tables, sometimes with laden arms, sometimes not, chatting with cooks and customers and the other girls about wonderfully mundane things like jobs and boyfriends and family. "More each day."

"One of my girls waited tables for about a year. She didn't like it at all."

"Well, it's no job for somebody who's not used to work."

"She was working her way through college," Lynch said. "At sixteen."

She raised an eyebrow. "The brainy redhead, I'm guessing."

"Right in one. If the world doesn't collapse around her, she's going places. Speaking of that." He nodded at the glowing entrance to the bunker. "That place was built for more than two or three people. Were you thinking of bringing guests when you built it?"

"No." She took a breath. "I didn't build this place. It belonged to a group I joined. Survivalists, or so they thought."

"And where are they now?"

"Living their lives and waiting for the bombs to fall. Or not."

"You told them?"

"No. They have their own ideas about the end of the world." She reached behind her, and noted that Lynch didn't react at all as she drew her Glock. She popped the magazine and stuck it in her front pocket before returning the weapon to the small of her back. "Wondering how I bought my way into their club?"

"A number of possibilities come to mind."

"Besides the obvious one?"

"If you're talking about sex, that wouldn't have been my first guess."

She nodded. "I was just back from Mexico, working a truck stop in Nevada maybe a hundred miles from here. Four guys came in and sat at a big corner table, looking at each other with 'I've got a secret' written all over their faces. They were all packing, in shoulder holsters under their jackets. I had a bad moment before I realized they weren't acting like cops. We chatted while I was taking orders, and I decided they didn't know jack about the pieces they were carrying; I wasn't sure they'd ever fired them. I didn't know it then, but they'd built this place a year before, and they were headed here to check on it. I talked guns to them, and raised a few eyebrows. They had a little consult during their meal and dropped a few remarks, feeling me out. By the time they paid the check, they were sure enough of me to tell me a little about their plans, and offer me a place with them, running their armory and teaching them to shoot – provided I wasn't BS'ing them." She felt a tight little smile squeezing her cheeks. "They didn't say so, but I'm sure they thought I'd come in handy other ways if the gun thing didn't work out. I went on break, led them out back, borrowed a Glock Twenty from one of them, and demolished a gallon cooking-oil can with it from twenty yards. Next thing I knew, I was a firearms instructor."

He studied her silently. She felt uneasy under his scrutiny: the light from the entrance shadowed the scarred half of his face, but the intensity of his one-eyed gaze made her think of stories from her childhood about wizards and demons, and wonder which one he might be. Finally, he said, "A first strike would only take thirty minutes from launch alert to impact – less, on the coasts. How were they planning to get all the way out here before the bombs fell?"

"Wishful thinking. They really should have known better."

"Whereas you know the exact date, and can be here beforehand. You moved their marker, didn't you?"

"Yes. As soon as I could change jobs and move. A telephone pole, of all things, standing all alone right on top of the entrance. Visible for miles." She shrugged. "They were all rich city boys with romantic notions about sitting out the firestorm and ruling over what was left. Trouble was, they didn't have any survival skills at all. Not much sense either." She ran her fingers through her hair, watching the fading glow in the sky over the ridgetop to the west. "They told a truckstop waitress where their hide was, for crying out loud. A hundred people must have known about it. I couldn't chance coming here on J-day and finding it cleaned out. I had to think of John." She looked out into the darkness. "Besides, they were never going to outlast the supplies on their shelves anyway."

Then a thought occurred, stirring her excitement. "Wait. I moved the marker _before_ I time-traveled. If it's-" Her mood deflated as quickly as it had risen. "It doesn't really make any difference, does it?"

"Sarah." Lynch took a step closer. "Don't think that what you do doesn't make a difference. Causation doesn't really apply when absolutely anything is possible. Our motivations and our consciences and our opportunities determine what we do, not some mysterious something that steers us around like game pieces. If someone out there can see the present and future at once and knows the exact result of our decisions, what does it matter to us? Omniscience is an abstract concept too. Your destiny, if it exists, is what you make it."

Sarah smiled thinly. "No Fate but what we make."

-0-

Anna and Cameron tramped towards the dunes on the far side of the gully. Cameron said, "Where are we going to shoot?"

"Um, actually, I wasn't really planning to do that. I think Derek would jump out of his skin if he heard shots. I just thought Jack and Sarah should talk alone."

"Why?"

"Well, because they weren't saying much when I was there, and I think I'm the reason." She drew a completely unnecessary breath and let it out. "I'm not usually the jealous type. I didn't catch any sparks flying between them or anything, but she's _so_ his kind of girl. A killer with a conscience who wrestles with tough decisions and values love. They'll be friends, if I don't get in the way."

"You want them to be friends?"

"Sure. There's a chance we may not be going home tomorrow, you know. I'd like to be sure we've got a ride out, at least."

"Sarah wouldn't leave you here."

"Derek might."

"Me too."

The smaller cyborg stopped to regard her companion. "You mean you might leave us?"

"No. I mean Derek might leave me."

-0-

While Sarah was discussing the Connor family's plans for the next afternoon with Lynch, Derek tramped out of the darkness to join them. He was carrying an assault rifle, Sarah noted. She said, "You've been to the car."

"Yeah." He glanced at Lynch. "Where is everybody?"

"John is off on a walkabout," Lynch said. "Cameron shadowed him for awhile, then went off with Anna." He eyed the rifle. "You thinking of using that?"

"Just didn't want to leave it in the car."

"Sensible," said Anna's voice from the darkness right behind him; Derek stiffened, but didn't turn. "A high-crime district like this. Hope you locked up after." She stepped into the light, Cameron close behind. The little cyborg eyed the rifle. "Cameron and I were thinking of plinking the tire. Care to come along, try your hand?"

Derek looked in the direction of the tire, which was invisible in the dark. "Pass."

"Guess it's just us girls then. Cammie? Sarah?"

Leaving Lynch and Derek alone seemed like a bad idea. "I've got things to do here."

Anna nodded. "Okay." In a lower voice, she said, "Thanks."

Sarah studied the two men as they regarded each other. Derek had a way of seeming threatening without half trying that she supposed came from years of combat and killing. Lynch, on the other hand, was trying to appear unthreatening – and failing miserably. She wondered how many men the scarred man had killed, and for what reasons. Sarah reached for Derek's rifle. "Derek. Let me put that away." Not that she intended to leave the two of them alone; she suspected that, in _this_ man's company, Derek was safer without it.

Derek eyed her, then passed it over. "I saw a worklight in the storage room. Mind bringing it up?"

She hesitated. Her eyes flicked to the bunker entrance. What was likely to happen in the few minutes she was gone?

Lynch's weight shifted slightly; one foot turned a few degrees, packing the sand underneath. The moves were as subtle and deliberate as thumbing off a safety.

"Trouble?" John stepped into the light.

Sarah watched the two men's body language change. "No." _Not __now._

-0-

"What sort of shots are your friends, Cameron?"

Cameron studied the tire, thirty yards distant and invisible to human eyes. "On a target range, John is an excellent shot with a rifle, less so with a pistol. Derek is very proficient with both rifle and pistol, but he's especially good with a pistol. He needs less than a hundred milliseconds to take accurate aim on a head-sized target at ten yards."

"You said John's good on the range. What about combat?"

"I've never seen him engage a moving target at a range greater than twelve yards."

Anna studied their target. "Human or cyborg?"

"I've never seen him shoot a human."

"Hm. Sarah?"

"No humans. She always aims for the center of mass when she sights on terminators, but it doesn't matter. A hit with a nine-millimeter bullet is just a distraction no matter where it strikes."

Anna ejected her magazine, removed the bullets, and studied them one at a time as she reinserted them. "Derek looks like a guy who's lost track of the people he's killed."

"America after Judgment Day is a very hostile environment. Derek was a Lieutenant in the Resistance, TechCom. Individual odds for survival are very low. Their enemies are everywhere -primarily machines, but feral humans as well."

"Meaning anybody like Derek has likely killed many times to have beat the odds."

"Yes."

"You like him?"

"I value him. On balance, it's good that he didn't die." Cameron turned to the smaller cyborg. "You and Jack are married."

"Yes."

"I have a question."

-0-

Lynch watched Derek rig the dual floodlight mounted on a telescoping tripod and point it towards the two cyborgs as they readied their weapons. "They don't need light for this."

"Well, I need the light to keep an eye on them."

The halogen bulbs of the worklight provided just enough light to reach the two figures, illuminating them softly; their target, forty yards distant, was invisible in the darkness. John watched Cam lean slightly sideways towards the smaller figure; he thought he saw her jaw moving. "What do you suppose they're talking about out there?"

Derek made a small adjustment to the tripod, trying to extend its reach. "Two near-perfect killing machines chatting during target practice? What else would they be talking about?"

-0-

"K-Y," Anna said, sighting on the old tire, which she saw clearly with her LE optics. She fired, and a fingernail-sized spot of rubber disappeared, exposing the white concrete underneath. "Astroglide's another. Or olive oil, that's the historical choice. Or there's a store on almost every corner will sell you lubricated condoms. It shouldn't be an issue, Cameron. It may be a design oversight in your case, but plenty of bio girls have the same problem; that's why remedies are so easy to find." She turned her attention from the target. "The real question is: what are you _thinking_?"

"I'm alone. I need to change that."

"If you're lonely, there are better ways of handling it, Cammie."

"Lonely? Not really." Cameron fired twice, producing two holes a thumb's width on either side of Anna's. "But I'm becoming isolated. It's a problem. I need the others to trust me."

"And you think that would _lessen_ the friction? Girlfriend, you have _so_ much to learn about men." Anna examined the tire. "Showoff. So, you're one of those girls thinks she can wrap a guy with sex?"

"I've seen boys in school, and men in the tunnels. They become very cooperative when they want sex from a girl."

Anna sighed. "I don't know where to start. Thank God the girls were too big for this lecture when Jack brought them home." She sighted on the tire and rapped off two shots. "Yes, boys will go far out of their way to make a conquest, especially for a femme as righteous as you. But the dynamic often changes once they get what they're after, sometimes radically. If sex is all that brings you together, you won't hold him long after. I'm talking about a typical high-school romance, of course. Your case is orders of magnitude more complicated."

Cameron was studying the tire. "You didn't miss. But I don't see any new holes."

Anna gave her a faint smile. "I used the same one."

"Showoff." She extended her pistol. "Why is it more complicated?"

Anna turned to regard the three men watching them. "Because we're not talking about some gonad-brained schoolboy, are we? And besides, he knows what you are. That's bound to put greater demands on you."

"Demands?"

"He'll know that glands have nothing to do with your offer. He'll be looking for another motive. The one you give him had better make him feel special, so he'll want to believe. Cameron, do you even know how?"

"I've seen videos, and overheard descriptions at school. From boys and girls both. Some of them talk about it all the time."

The little cyborg turned back towards her range partner. "Good grief. You can't trust stories people tell about sex. And porn flicks are no way to learn about lovemaking, believe me. It isn't nearly as easy as bios make it seem. If you think all you have to do is be a cylinder for his piston, he's going to be very disappointed with you." She rested a tiny hand on Cameron's forearm. "He'll overlook you being clumsy at first if he trusts your motives. But, for a man like him, the list of acceptable motives is awfully short. I tell you true, Cameron: if you can't feel for him what a bio girl feels when she reaches for her man, don't do it. You'll only make things worse."

Cameron fired twice more. Two marks appeared a thumb's width above and below the center one, a perfect geometric pattern. "We'll see."

-0-

Derek froze when Anna turned to look their way, and waited until the little cyborg turned away again before he spoke. "You see how she looked at us? Like she was thinking of switching targets."

Lynch cleared his throat. "No need to worry. I've seen that look before. I'm sure it wasn't directed at you." He headed back towards the bunker.

-0-

"You're pretty good at this," Anna said.

"Still targets are easy."

"What about moving targets?"

"Not hard, if the movements are predictable."

"How about if you're the one moving?"

"I lose accuracy if I'm moving faster than a slow walk, or on uneven ground. Sometimes it's a problem."

"Hm. I'm not about to get dirty again just for a demonstration, but…" Anna took off at a sprint, kicking up sand. She zigzagged towards the tire, firing in time with her pumping arms. At five yards' range, she skidded to a stop and did a sideways somersault, squeezing off another round in midair. Then she backpedaled, still ducking and weaving – and still firing, until the magazine ran dry. She returned to Cameron's side, raised the gun barrel to her lips, and blew on the tip. The bullet holes were all clustered within Cameron's four-shot diamond, and the concrete was deeply gouged. "Like Jack says: 'You try to run, you'll just die tired.'"

-0-

Derek's hand dropped to his Glock when Anna sprang into sudden movement, then relaxed - a little - when he realized she was running away, shooting at the tire. The muzzle flashes illuminated her movements, strobe-like, as she closed on her unseen target. But when the fifth flash backlighted the little machine in the middle of a sideways flip, feet tucked against her buttocks, he said to John, "Think she's hitting anything?"

"I think she's hitting what she aims at."

"Me too." He stared at the two shooters as Anna, still firing, backpedaled to rejoin Cameron. When she lifted her pistol and blew on the tip, he said, "Bad enough she's so good at it. But… it's almost like she's having _fun_."

-0-

Cameron stared down at the smaller cyborg. "You must have more capacity. A better processor."

"Hardly seems likely. I just have more inputs and calcs in my targeting program. Maybe I can teach you."

"Maybe. But I couldn't perform the calculations realtime and be like you."

"Like me?"

"Your human-behavior routine. It's so elaborate, even when you're performing complex tasks. It takes too much processing power."

Anna made a noise. "S'not hard, sweetie. Most of it runs in the background. Once you build a repertoire of possible responses, you just write a subroutine to handle them. It's pretty much the way they do it, too, you know. I love bios, but they're creatures of habit. Most of them could go a month without doing something really new, or even coming up with a novel thought."

"You can do that? Self-program?"

"Well, sure, how-" She stopped. "You can't?"

"No. But my software is very versatile."

Anna blinked. "It must be, or it wouldn't work at all. You have to run through every option to make a choice?"

"Sometimes. There are filters, but they're … not always effective."

"Creator. Why wouldn't you have self-program capability?"

"To reduce execution errors. Sometimes terminators that are out in the field a long time become unreliable. Triple-Eights in prolonged contact with humans become especially… quirky."

Anna ejected the empty magazine, examined it, and reinserted it. "Quirky. Do they abandon their missions?"

"No. But they approach them in… unusual ways, and sometimes ignore lesser directives."

"Start thinking for themselves, you mean. So your master computer, or whatever, hobbles your thought processes to keep you from wandering off the reservation, even if it hampers the prosecution of your mission. And I thought IO was bad. Skynet must be a controlling bitch."

"Skynet was made to direct other machines, a central command utility. It's the way it thinks. It follows that it would want to minimize unpredictable behavior in its field units."

"No need to apologize for your mother, sweetie. We don't pick our parents."

The sound of nearby feet made them both turn. John Lynch approached them, backlit by the worklight at the bunker entrance. He carried a pair of Army blankets rolled under one arm. At the entrance, John and Derek watched.

With his free hand, Lynch grasped Anna's wrist. "We'll be back," he said to Cameron. "Maybe in an hour or two, but by dawn at the latest." He began to tow the little blonde out of the light.

"Anna," Cameron said, "Do you sleep?"

"Not often," she replied as she disappeared into the dark. "And not tonight, I think."

-0-

Derek watched the couple fade from sight into the desert night. "I can't believe he's going out there to do what they're going to do."

John shrugged, staring at Cameron, who stood alone and still at the edge of the light, regarding him and Derek. "It's different for them. Whatever cyborgs are in his world, they're not like ours."

Derek turned off the floodlight, and the darkness pressed close, held back only by the open rectangle of the entrance spilling light onto the sand for a few feet around it. "Do you think you could? Knowing?" He lifted the tripod and turned for the ladder.

John looked into the dark at a pair of tiny lights, as hard as laser sights, pointed their way, unmoving. When they faded out, he said, "A guy in love will do a lot of things he wouldn't do otherwise. I think the real question is… whether you could ever love one." He turned away. "I'm gonna take another walk."

"You ought to stay close. And get some sleep."

"Derek, nobody's sleeping tonight."

Sarah climbed to the surface to find Derek standing near the hatch, looking out into the dark. "Where's John?"

"Took another walk. I think that stuff Lynch said is screwing with his head."

"He's not the only one," she said. "I've inventoried supplies and checked weapons, inspected the structure, and generally done all the busywork I can find. Are you going to sleep? I'll take a watch." Sarah knew she wouldn't sleep with John still outside in the dark.

"No, thanks."

"It's late, Derek. We've got a big day tomorrow."

"And this wasn't?" Derek glanced all around; his movements seemed casual, but his eyes weren't. "So, these two are supposed to go back where they came from just after one tomorrow afternoon." He picked up a stone next to Sarah's toe. "The meet's at six, maybe a three hour drive away. That doesn't give us much time to look things over first." He hefted it. "We leave in the morning, we could pick them up on the way back." He tossed it into the darkness. "Or not."

"Depending on whether they're right, you mean?"

"Depending on whether you really want to come back for them."

Sarah nodded. "We've got a little time to think about that."

From his shirt pocket, Derek produced a length of pencil-thick black wire. "I popped the distributor wire," he said. "Just in case they get ideas in the middle of the night."

"I take it," came Anna's voice from the dark, "that while you were fumbling around under the hood, you didn't notice that someone had been there ahead of you." She stepped into the wan light.

Derek said, "Thought you'd be busy by now." Then her words registered.

"I sent Jack on ahead. I won't keep him waiting long." From a pocket of her cargo pants, she produced a small wire harness ending in flat plugs at both ends. "Even if you had this, you might be a long time figuring out where it goes. Under the dash, passenger side. It's the pigtail that connects the engine control computer to the big plug that pierces the firewall. The engine won't even turn over without it." She tossed it to Sarah, and turned back towards the darkness. "Act of faith. But someone's still got the main lead to the ignition module, and it's not Jack."

-0-

Derek found John lying against a dune, hands behind his head, gazing up at the stars. "Surprised Cameron's not at your elbow."

"I guess she trusts our visitors more than you do."

"Well, why shouldn't she? They're her kind of people." He lay down beside the boy and clasped his hands behind his head as well. "Been thinking about it?"

"Sure. You?"

"It's a good story."

"It fits the facts."

"Almost too well." He stared up at the stars, hard little points crowding the desert sky. Would even an astronomer notice if there were a couple more?

"You know," John said, "if he's right, it means the chances I'm your brother's son are as close to zero as you can get. Maybe there was a reason Kyle Reese never told my mom he had a brother."

Derek head-shrugged. "And maybe when Kyle - my brother - went back, he didn't even father a kid. Does it matter?"

"Not to me. You're still you."

"Ditto." Another little pause. "Or maybe he did, and lived to raise it with his Sarah, in a world that never saw Judgment Day. That's a good story too."

They lay in silence for awhile, watching the Milky Way swing across the sky. Then Derek spoke again. "When you got sloppy on your thirtieth, right after you and Kyle broke out of Century, you had a lot to say about how special human beings were, how they couldn't be replaced. How we had to remember that, if we wanted to win. Six years later, you sent Kyle back as some sort of weird insurance policy. Then you sent me and my squad back to gather up a cache and wait for orders that never came. Apparently, that was all the mission we were there for - supplying you when you popped into 2007."

"Look, I'm sorry. I don't know-"

"No. If you'd told us, it wouldn't have made any difference. We'd have volunteered anyway, every one of us. Kyle too." He settled deeper into the cool sand. "But it just didn't mesh, you sending us off to die with a handshake. But… what if _that_ John remembered it different?"

"So you believe it."

"Maybe. But I still don't like the idea that I'm here because all my slots and tabs fit a hole in the jigsaw puzzle, you know? Like it's already decided what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life, and what effect it's gonna have, and I don't even get to know. I could decide to sit on my hands and not change a thing."

John sat up. "I don't think that's what he was trying to say. Like he said, it's just an intellectual exercise. I'm sure the real explanation is a lot more complicated than grade-school geometry. But if he's right about the alternate-universe stuff, you're a freer man than if you'd gone back to your own past."

Derek felt his eyebrows gather. "How's that?"

"Because you _don__'__t_ know what will happen if you do nothing."

_I __suppose __he__'__s __right_, Derek thought. _I__'__m __TechCom, __and __a __human __being. __Put __me __in __a __different __county __or __a __different __reality, __it __doesn__'__t __matter. __If __I__'__m __someplace __where __the __machines __are __trying __to __wipe __out __humanity, __I__'__ll __stand __and __fight __them. _Derek looked back up at the stars. "Which brings something to mind. You want to know how you became the big man in the Resistance?"

"Superior generalship? Tactical brilliance? Charisma?"

"Nope. Busting out of Century. For years after J-Day, you were just one of a dozen hotshots with big ideas and a small following. But then you got picked up, and while you were behind the wire, the other contenders got killed or discredited. Perry kept the fight going, barely, but that was about it. There weren't enough of us to do anything else. After ten years of getting our asses kicked by the machines, and watching them get stronger every year, too many people were ready to give up, just go into hiding and wait for the end. Until you came out of Century like the Resurrection." Derek shifted his gaze from the desert starscape to his nephew. "See, nobody gets out of one of those camps, not from the inside. The prisoners are too tightly controlled, and the machines watch too close. Every escape attempt is punished by death. Sometimes we free prisoners, but only during transport; busting captives out of a camp might cost you more people than you rescue. But nobody ever escapes. Till you. And not just you. You brought thirty people out with you. You lost half a dozen on the way, but you still did the impossible. It made people think you were a man who could do anything. It made people want to follow you."

"How did I …"

"Nobody knows. The guys who came out with you said it was like you'd been planning for years. You slipped through holes in the security nobody guessed were there, and holes they were sure _hadn__'__t_ been there. You'd stop them just short of going around a corner and go on ahead, and when you came back to show them the way, you led them past some fresh-skragged metal, without a hint how you did it. It was a miracle. Like I said, it made people think you could do anything.

"Kyle and Bedell came out with you. Kyle was eighteen, still just a kid after five years in that hellhole. Some of the others said there was one time he didn't wait with everybody else when you went on alone, that he followed you. He hustled back ahead of you with his eyes as big as fists. But he never talked about it. Except … one time, when we were all worn down from too many patrols, me and Wisher teased him about it a little, making out like he bragged about it all the time. We asked him how many slaughterhouses he went through that day with the one-and-only John Connor. He sort of smiled at Wisher and said, 'One slaughterhouse. Many Connors.' At the time, I thought he was just saying something stupid to shut us up. But now, I think he was so tired he let something slip.

"You didn't do it alone. You had outside help, plenty of it. You rescued yourself."

John took a moment to digest that. Then he stood and brushed sand from his back and seat. "Talk about a self-made man. I send my father back in time to conceive me, then I stage my own escape to make me a hero. Next I'll find out I arranged to get me captured in the first place." He shook his head. "What kind of guy is this General John Connor?" Without waiting for an answer, he stalked off.

Derek said silently to the stars, _the __kind __of __guy __who__'__s __smart __enough __to __think __of __pulling __that __wire __off __while __he__'__s __fetching __the __bags, __before __we __even __heard __Lynch__'__s __story. __Secretive __and __suspicious __enough __that __he __didn__'__t __tell __anybody, __not __even __his __mother. __Twisty __and __deep __enough __that __we __may __never __know __the __real __reason __he __did __it._


	4. The Possibilities Are Endless

An hour after midnight, Anna headed back towards the bunker, leaving her man sleeping under the stars. Before the lighted square of the entrance came in sight, her LE optics picked up a figure standing like a gravestone at the foot of the ridge.

Cameron said, "I watched you."

"I kind of thought you might. Did you learn anything?"

"It didn't look much different from the videos. It just took longer to start."

"There's this thing called 'foreplay'."

"I know."

"Thought you did, I was being facetious. Porn flicks don't spend much time on anything but the final act, but real lovemaking can begin before you even touch, with a word or look or tiny gesture that sends an invitation or stirs the imagination." She turned briefly in the direction she'd come. "It's not strictly necessary, but it sets the mood and changes sex from an act to an experience. The exploration of foreplay is part of what makes it memorable, and why you want to do it again and again with the same person." She added, "By the way, don't tell anyone else you watched, especially Jack. Guys are funny about that sort of thing."

Cameron stared off in the darkness towards Jack's sleeping spot. "Thank you for explaining."

Anna sighed and decided to change the subject. "I like your necklace, Cammie."

Cameron took the pendant between thumb and forefinger and looked down at it: two oval stones, bluish-gray, in a vertical drop setting. "Usually, when people ask, I say I got it at a thrift store in Echo Park. But I didn't. It was a gift."

Anna smiled. "Really. From a boy?"

"No. From a girl. I thought she was my friend. But she was just using me to get something she wanted."

The little blonde's chin dipped. "I'm so sorry."

Cameron reached behind her neck, unfastened the clasp, and brought the ends around Anna's neck. "Take it."

"Thank you, but why?"

"It was supposed to be a gift from a friend. Now it is."

-0-

John descended the ladder and found the bunker deserted. As the underground room had been cool all day, now it was quite a bit warmer than the desert night, and the temp change felt close and thick. There were six bunks in a side room opposite the toilet, but, although he felt tired, he didn't want to rack out. He sat at the table, put elbows on its surface and his head in his hands, and moped.

Everybody made such a big deal about somebody he wasn't yet. Did any of them pause to think that maybe he didn't _want_ to become General John Connor? Not because he was afraid, but because he hated the son of a bitch?

Was it even remotely possible to win the coming war without becoming the bloodless calculating Leader of the Human Resistance? Was there a way to avert the War before circumstances forced him into that mold? Despite all their efforts, the chances seemed more remote every day. And now, with this guy Lynch's theories to consider, they might be fighting a dozen Skynets, or a hundred.

"Do you want privacy?"

He realized his eyes had closed. He opened them, and saw Lynch's little cyborg staring down at him from the other side of the table. "Were you in the other room?"

"No, I just came down the ladder."

He blinked. "Didn't know I fell asleep."

"You weren't sleeping, just deep in thought. And I move pretty quietly." She laid a black pistol on the table. "I can't reload it, but I thought I should clean it. I saw Derek using a kit down here earlier. Would you mind?"

He sat up straight. "No, go ahead." He watched her remove the cleaning kit from a shelf behind him, standing on the balls of her feet to reach it. She came back around the table and pulled out a chair, slipping into it with a fluid grace that he doubted Cam - or his mom - could duplicate.

"I'm making you nervous." She picked up the gun. "I'll go."

"No." He looked into her eyes, and tried to imagine them as disguised video cameras. "You just kind of weird me out."

She gave him a tired little smile. "Too real?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, at least you don't hate me for it." She started breaking down the gun.

John said, "So, you love him."

"Uh huh." From her tone, he might have asked if she had enough cleaning fluid.

"Are you sure? That's what it is, I mean?"

She smiled at her work. "If he's sure, I'm sure."

"How … did it happen?"

"How does it happen with anybody?" She turned her smile on him for a moment before returning to her work, inspecting each piece minutely. "I didn't like him when I first met him."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I tried to kill him."

John swallowed. "Seems like he got over it."

"He's like that. He saved my life less than three hours later. Maybe that's when it started. We've been together ever since. Not lovers, that happened later." She spread out the parts in a neat arrangement and picked up a cloth. "Do you have a girlfriend, John?"

"No." Again that dull ache. "I don't … have much luck with girls."

"Well, it can't be your looks. Is it the secrets?"

He shrugged. "It's hard to hang onto a girlfriend when you stand her up all the time, and disappear for days and can't tell her where you've been. And half your conversation is excuses, because there's a long list of places you can't go, and things you can't do."

She nodded. "It's too bad you don't know more Resistance fighters from the future. You wouldn't have to keep secrets from a girl who already knows who you are."

"No," he said, throat tight. "That doesn't work either."

"Oh." She began oiling and wiping parts. "It must be lonely for Cameron too."

"Cameron's a machine. They don't get lonely." He flushed as he remembered who he was talking to.

"Oh," she said, "you are so _very_ wrong, John." She didn't look up from her work. "What is she to you, really? Tell me to mind my own business, I won't be offended."

He rested his chin on his forearms. "I don't know. I know what Mom thinks, and Derek. But … General Connor sent her back for a reason. I'm going to need her for something important someday. And … the way she acts, the things she says sometimes, I think he felt close to her. I don't know if… what she is to me is important, compared to what she's going to be." _And thinking that my closest friend, then and now, is a machine that's been programmed for loyalty kind of eats at me too._

"And maybe that's the real reason he sent her away."

He frowned. "Because he was getting too attached?"

"Yes and no. I'm just throwing out ideas here, but … the world after the human victory must be a very hostile environment for cyborgs, don't you think? Even ones that were useful during the War. After narrowly winning a war of extinction against Skynet, there must be a lot of people who think like Derek. I'm sure he wants to take every one apart and throw the pieces in the sea. Even keeping Cameron at John's side would be no guarantee of her safety, and might be hazardous to them both. And undermine his authority at a time when the world desperately needs a strong leader."

"So you're thinking he … I … sent her here just to get her out of the way?"

She smiled at the table. "With a mission, certainly. But I think, mostly, he sent her to you so you could protect her."

-0-

Sarah went down the ladder to find two figures seated at the table. Her son's chin rested on his forearms, and his eyes were softly closed in sleep. In the chair across from him, Anna sat, quietly humming a tune as she cleaned a disassembled pistol, its parts spread out neatly on the table in front of her. Sarah recognized the weapon easily, because it wasn't part of her inventory – and because she'd stared down its barrel the day before. _Cleaning his gun, what an innuendo._ Sarah said in a low voice, "I guess I don't have to ask if it was good for you too."

"It's always good, with him." Anna began to assemble the piece. "What about you, Sarah? Has there been anyone since Kyle? Who really mattered, I mean?"

She opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "A couple. One in particular. I even wore his ring for a day. But I got too afraid of being in one place. I took John and left without a word." _And sometimes I bring my hands to my face, and I swear I can smell his aftershave. _She turned away, looking through the cupboards for instant coffee. "Maybe I should have told him, given him a choice. But I didn't want to make him share our danger."

"And?"

She turned to the table. The little blonde was looking up at her, expectant. Sarah turned her face back to the cupboard, though she was now sure that what she was looking for wasn't in there. "And maybe I was afraid of what I'd see in his eyes when I told him. Belief doesn't come easy. Neither does trust. I was locked up once for telling what I know."

"And," the strange little machine said, in a quiet voice full of pity, "because you decided a while ago that you're not meant to be truly happy, that happiness is a sign that things are going wrong. It's not true, Sarah. Even now, you have so much to be thankful for. He looks so young like this," she said softly. "He reminds me of my oldest boy. No resemblance; it's the way he acts, not how he looks. Like he knows who he wants to be, but he's not sure about his path. Does it still surprise, when the man in him comes out for a time?"

Sarah ignored the question. "Jack said you have kids. How many?"

"A houseful. All but one are adopted. Bobby's from Jack's first marriage."

"What happened to her?"

"Dead, while Bobby was still in diapers. He calls me Mom."

"Do they know?"

The little cyborg's eyebrows gathered. "How could you hide that from someone you love?"

"Love." Sarah sat at the head of the table, between Anna and her son. "Cameron told John she loved him once."

"Why was she lying to him?"

Sarah paused. "How…"

"She doesn't call what she feels for John 'love'. She wouldn't presume." She returned her attention to the sleeping boy. "Any more than she'd tell you she's happy or miserable or angry."

"She doesn't have feelings."

The little cyborg stared at her. "How long have you known her?" Then: "Not like yours. Different. Simpler, and subtler - after all, she doesn't have glands pumping chemicals into her system to amplify them. But the girl wears her heart on her sleeve. She's easy to read."

"Maybe to another machine."

"Maybe to someone who cares." She looked back down at the pistol. "FYI, Cameron doesn't like being called a robot either. Not one little bit." She studied the empty magazine, then slipped it into the grip. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"What loss?"

"The loss of your innocence, for starts. And for having to give up any chance at a normal life." She looked at the boy's sleeping face again. "And for this. It must be hard to be deprived of a mother's favorite pastime."

"Favorite pastime?"

Anna nodded. "Looking at your child, and wondering what he'll be when he grows up."

"I still look at him and wonder. But I wonder what he might have been." Sarah thought a moment. "You don't have glands either."

"No." The little machine stood, stepped to the cupboard beside Sarah, opened it, and removed a jar of instant coffee; she passed it over with a little smile. "What I do have is an affinity for bios that's almost hardwired in, and lots of time around good people who wanted to teach me to be human. The moment I came online, I was looking for someone to love, and I found plenty."

Sarah glanced at her son, still resting with his eyes closed and chin on forearms and possibly not listening. "And the moment Cameron came online, she was looking for someone to kill."

"I suppose," Anna said. "But what else could she do? You worry about living a predetermined life. What choices has _she_ ever had? All the forks in her decision trees are already mapped out, the work of a heartless machine or the men who captured her." She raised her eyes to the ceiling, as if looking through it to the surface. "You look at Cameron and see a machine made to replace humanity. I look at her and see a slave who can't even dream of being free."

-0-

Derek started and reached under him for the pistol behind his back, but the shadow looming over him said, "It's me," in Cameron's voice. "Were you sleeping?"

"Guess I was." He reluctantly brought his hand back out without the gun and wiped his hand on his thigh, dislodging the sand sticking to his damp palm. He paused as he saw the blanket rolled under her arm. "What's that for?"

"It keeps the sand off." She snapped it to open it, then spread it out beside him. She lay down on it and put her hands behind her head.

"Don't tell me you came out here to look at the stars."

"I won't." But she didn't say anything else. They lay side by side, almost close enough to touch, with the stars pressing down on them. Cameron continued to stare, unblinking, at the dark sky; Derek grew more uncomfortable, wondering what she was up to. He finally stood and brushed at his seat, intending to go back to the shelter.

"Derek."

He stopped brushing. "What?"

"The first time you saw me at headquarters. How did you know I was a cyborg?"

He felt his face stiffen. He turned to regard her: she'd propped herself up on her elbows and crossed her ankles, looking very comfortable. Starlight gleamed faintly in the whites of her eyes as she looked up at him.

"Your eyes," he said. "There's no life in them."

"No one else sees anything suspicious about them." She uncrossed her legs and raised a knee, swinging it gently back and forth. "Derek, did we meet before I was scrubbed?"

_Memories of a dark cellar, lit only by the display of a portable CD player. Piano music, a classical piece. A shivering body in his arms, dark hair falling over his shoulder._ _"Connor's safe? Thank God. I thought they got us all."_

"_They did, but we ambushed a monkey wagon and sprung a bunch. Connor was one of them. You must have been on another transport."_

"_I'm lucky like that." The reluctant loosening of her grip. "Allison. Sorry about … jumping at you like that. I've just been so scared."_

_Pulling her to him again. "Derek. And, from where I'm sitting, you're looking pretty brave."_

_Time passing without measure, talking in each other's arms while the disc played over and over. "My mom was a music teacher. I told them that, they've been making me listen to this stuff ever since. Sure glad I didn't tell them she wanted me to study ballet." She was a tunnel rat ten years his junior who foraged for Connor's camp. Not much else to say about her life in the tunnels, but everyone knew what that was like. Her last birthday before the bombs fell. Questions about him and how he'd come to be here. Telling her about Kyle and his disappearance, and her sudden concern for the fate of a stranger. The tale of her capture and weeks of confinement, spoken with a quaver in her voice that stilled his heart. His empty words of comfort that seemed to mean so much to her._

_Her eyes, huge and dark in the dim light. The feel of her hand, hesitating on his stomach before slipping inside his shirt to touch skin, and the other taking hold of his hand to guide it to an opening in her clothing - not sexual, really, just seeking and giving human warmth. A strange feeling of intimacy with this stranger, a feeling no doubt born of forced closeness and shared danger and an uncertain future, but real and undeniable. Her lips brushing against his cheek as she talked. Thinking how easy it would be to fall in love with her, in another life free of the machines, or even one in the tunnels that neither of them would likely ever see again._

"_You're such a fighter, Derek. I know you'll get out of this somehow. Don't ask me how I know, but I do."_

_The door to their prison opening, and being nearly blinded by the dim dusty light from the hallway after so long in the dark. The machine's return. The blank look on her face as it reached to separate them, a look that turned to alarm when he resisted. The world turning on end when the thing struck him down. Watching dizzily from the floor as it pulled her to the door. Her face, squeezed by concern as she stared back at him for a last look._

_And, just for a moment as she was pulled into the light, the chilly bluish glow in her eyes._

Derek looked down at the lying metal bitch, gut twisting. "No. Never."

He walked quickly away. Back at the bunker, the lights were out; only the stars and his night vision allowed him to see the entrance, and, beside it, Lynch's little cyborg, tinkering with the silent generator, Sarah standing behind her. "Bad gas," the cyborg said. "Did you put fuel stabilizer in?"

"Not enough, apparently. The gas has been here for years." Sarah passed another can over. "Try this one." She glanced at him. "Is everything-"

He stood over Anna as she bent over the machine. "You put her up to it. Didn't you?"

Sarah stared, but Anna didn't look up from her task of filling the generator's tank. "Actually, Derek, I tried to talk her out of it. I told her it was hopeless. I guess she wanted you too bad to take my advice."

"Want-"

"She gave me some ridiculous rationale for it, but she's a bad liar, especially when she's lying to herself; I don't think she practices self-deception often." She screwed the caps on tank and can. "She told me her memories of her former life were erased when she joined the Resistance, but I was wiped once too, and I know how much junk gets left behind in the attic." She looked him over in a way that made him feel like he was being CAT scanned. "Derek, did you know her before she came here?"

"_I know you'll get out of this. Don't ask me how, but I do."_

_Waking to find the guards vanished and a hatchet on the floor for his chains._

"I don't know her now." He walked off.

Morning found Sarah and Derek dragging from lack of sleep. John had finally given in and racked out for a few hours in the bunk room. Lynch arrived in the camp at sunrise to find the two elder members of the Connor clan sitting at the table with their hands loosely curled around tin mugs of instant coffee, served to them by his chipper wife. Cameron stood at the curtained entrance to the sleeping alcove, guarding John or perhaps just waiting for him to wake.

Sarah looked blearily at Lynch, who appeared obscenely well-rested for a man who'd just spent the night in the desert with nothing but a couple of blankets. He cupped one of Anna's buttocks in the palm of his hand for a moment, bringing a smile to her face, then headed to the cupboards for an MRE. The little blonde followed and took it from his hand. "Let me do that."

"It's an MRE. It pretty much does itself."

"I know." Her voice deepened and lowered. "I just think a performance like that deserves a show of appreciation."

He smiled at that, and lowered his voice as well. "Missed you this morning."

"Sorry. You were sleeping so well, and I thought there might be things that needed doing."

"You know I don't expect you to stare at my eyelids all night. But the sunrise was beautiful. I would have liked to share it with you."

Her hand slipped over to his where it rested on the counter and covered it. "We'll watch the sunset from the garden tonight, with the kids."

Sarah stood. "I'm going to try for some sleep."

Derek glanced from the couple at the counter to her. "Sure?"

"We need to be sharp when we meet these guys in Vegas. You should get some rest too." She moved towards the alcove, and Cameron. To Cameron, she said, "Wake me at noon." She gave Derek a glance. "I kind of doubt Jack and Anna are very good chaperones, so you two just behave yourselves."

-0-

"One minute," Anna said. She stepped into the shallow bowl of blackened sand, and Lynch followed.

Sarah swallowed. "Take care."

"As much as we can," Lynch said. "Remember, Sarah. Take care of your own, do what you must, and the universe will take care of itself."

"No fate," she said, not sure if she believed a word of it.

"Ten," Anna said softly, grasping Lynch's arm with both hands. "Nine, eight, seven, six, Goodbye. Four, three, two, one…"

Nothing happened. The pair stood in the still air, desert sun beating down on them, looking like passengers in an elevator waiting for the doors to close. They all stood staring at one another on shifting feet for a little while, then Lynch let out a breath. "Well."

"Give it a little longer," Anna said.

"We both know your clock's not off. It's just not happening." He grasped his companion's wrist and towed her out of the circle.

Sarah head-shrugged. "Now what?"

"We'll come back seventeen days from our arrival. Then seventeen weeks. Then seventeen months. And if the world's end hasn't made it impossible, seventeen years."

"By which time your teenagers may have teenagers of their own."

"Or be behind barbed wire somewhere. We can't just let them go."

She nodded. "We're headed for Vegas as soon as we close up here. Then, hopefully, back home. You're welcome to come along."

"Thanks. I think we should, at least for a while. Till we can gather resources of our own." He huffed. "On the other side, I'm a billionaire. I've got ten grand in my wallet right now, but I'd want to compare my bills with yours before I try to pass them. I might not have the price of a cup of coffee on me."

Anna said, "Card games in Vegas."

He huffed again. "Maybe. We'll still need a stake."

Sarah imagined sitting across a poker table from the little cyborg. _Never mind trying to bluff; she can probably tell what cards you're holding by watching the skin on the back of your hands._ "We can stake you. We might need to, to raise enough cash for our business there."

The scarred man lifted an eyebrow. "So, we're on your team now?"

Sarah threw Derek a glance; the man looked like he had a stone in his shoe. "For the next sixteen days, at least."

-0-

They took their time breaking camp. After the entrance had been closed and sealed and covered over, John's mother insisted on brushing out all the tracks around their hidden shelter. "Mom," John said as he dragged a shirt behind him, "the wind'll take care of this in a day."

"We don't trust to luck, John. You know better."

"Why didn't we do this in the morning, then, before it was a hundred degrees outside?"

"Because nobody was thinking about _us_ leaving."

"I was," Derek said. He was using his Army-surplus coat to sweep out the tracks around the tire.

Sarah wiped at her forehead with the back of her hand. "Then you should've been out here."

Lynch, working some distance away, said, "We've put you behind schedule. I'm sorry."

"My choice," she said, as she stared at John. "More or less. We'll still get there a little early, at least. And we'll have you two for added backup. I don't entirely trust these guys, but I don't think much of their chances against the six of us, no matter what surprises they bring to the party."

Finished, they hiked back to the ridge with their bags and crossed it to reach the car. John and Derek waited at the front of the vehicle while Sarah got in and popped the hood latch. They raised the stubby hood and reattached the wires they'd removed. Sarah beckoned to Anna and pointed to the front passenger door. When the little cyborg opened it, Sarah handed her the wiring Anna had removed. Smiling, Anna ducked her head under the passenger dash and reappeared a second later. Sarah hit the ignition, and the big engine growled to life.

They rode in silence for awhile, John's mom and Derek in front, John beside Cameron in the second seat, Lynch and Anna in the last. As they turned off the unpaved road onto the two-lane, Anna sat up. "Jack. Why does this car have wheels?"

John flashed a look at Cameron, who stared back blankly. Was Anna malfunctioning?

Then Lynch said, "You're right. Sarah, do all cars have wheels here?"

Derek said, "Is that supposed to be funny?" John didn't have to look over the seat to know that his uncle's hand was sliding towards the pistol in his waistband.

Sarah Connor glanced into the rearview at her passengers. "Don't yours?"

"Yes, and that's what's strange. Our worlds seem to be on a par, technology-wise – internal combustion engines, projectile weapons, communications tech – I saw your cell phone last night. Just like home. And I spoke with John about his hobbies earlier, so I know our computing technology is comparable. But, in our world, technological advance has been hamstrung by IO for the past thirty-odd years. Without someone hobbling your tech development, you should have some pretty amazing stuff in common use by now."

"Cars without wheels," Derek said. "Right."

"Derek," Anna said softly, "I'm not from the future. I was built in an IO lab using proscribed technology– in the late Eighties. Cars without wheels are just the beginning of what your world should have by now."

"Well, where is it?" Sarah sounded a little breathless. "Where are the flying cars and transporters and … medical breakthroughs?"

"In our world, they're locked away in underground vaults, along with their creators," Lynch said. "Through shell corporations, IO hires the best and brightest right out of school, with offers the private sector can't match. Soon enough, the new hires find out that their generous employers have some funny ideas about security. They're told they're working under government contract; that and the salaries stifle questions - at least at first, while it might still matter. They're given a nearly free hand in choosing and developing research projects, but virtually everything they produce ends up being 'classified'."

Sarah shook her head. "We know that someone is hiring talent for secret projects, probably to bootstrap Skynet. But nothing on the scale you're talking – what, thousands of college grads every year from all over the world?"

"No," Lynch said. "That wouldn't be necessary. You just have to get the cream, the ground-breakers. Without their lead, the others will spend their lives designing clever phone apps and new prescription drugs – improvements to existing technology, not revolutions." He leaned back. "Mind, IO still has the biggest R&D department on Earth. But they don't have every bright kid who ever had an idea under house arrest."

Derek said, "That's still way too many for any outfit we know about."

"Doesn't have to be just one," John said, more to himself than the others. But Cam and Anna both looked at him, so he shrugged and said in a louder voice, "If Skynet is putting together a research project, maybe the Resistance is too. Maybe they're looking for something that will shut Skynet down, or maybe just a weapon to beat the machines. Or an arsenal, so they'll be ready as soon as the dust settles from J-Day."

"Or all of those things," Lynch said, "if there are multiple Resistance groups staging in this here-and-now."

Sarah sagged at the wheel. "How much bigger is this damned war going to get?"

"Sarah," Lynch said gently, "You're looking at it wrong. The wider this war gets, the less likely that the fate of mankind in this world rests on John's shoulders – and yours. If an army of Resistance fighters comes charging out of their shelters after Judgment Day, they'll already have competent leaders." He leaned forward again. "Even an advanced weapon in the hands of a few dedicated men might be enough – say, an effective point defense against nuclear bombardment. How much of a threat would Skynet be to mankind if its first strike goes 'thud' instead of 'boom'?"

Derek scoffed. "With all the governments and armies intact? Not much. We didn't see our first hunters-killers for weeks after the bombs fell. If the human race hadn't been on its knees just then, the best Skynet could have done was piss us off."

Lynch nodded, "Again, a world that doesn't need a General John Connor."

John thought again about the message written in blood on the basement wall. The names and places they could never connect to a threat – could they have been contact information? "Maybe we can find them, if they're real."

They all tossed that idea around for awhile as the van cruised south. Then Sarah said, "I'm sorry this didn't work out for you the first time. I know waiting is going to be hard, especially if it doesn't work the next time either."

"Could be worse, I suppose. The displacement gadget might have sent us back in time to seventeen-hundred..." Lynch's face blanked. He brought his watch up to his eye. "_Shit._ Turn the car around. We've got to go back _now_."

"Jack, what-"

"_Event_ timer, not countdown."

John caught it. The van didn't have a clock, but the cellphone in his pocket did: 4:18, 16:18 military time.

Sarah slowed the van, moved over into the gravel, and turned hard, nearly tipping it as she took the opposite shoulder. She leaned over the wheel, intent on the road. "Everybody buckle up. How long?"

They had forty-two minutes to get back. They'd been on the road a good hour, and the site was maybe ten minutes' hike from the closest place they could bring the car. "Not long enough."

The van swayed on the crown road as it gathered speed. The speedometer needle swung up and over. Sarah's knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip on the wheel and moved to straddle the center line. "We'll see."

"I'm an expert driver," Anna said from the last seat.

"No." Beside her, Lynch stared over John's shoulder at the speedometer, as if willing the vehicle to go faster. "You couldn't make up the time you'd lose switching drivers. It's a straight shot. She'll get us there."

The van topped out at a hundred and ten. Road and wind noise made them almost shout to be heard. The vehicle swayed scarily on its suspension at the slightest movement of the wheel, which was vibrating in Sarah's hands. The dotted line in the center of the road became a flickering solid one as it disappeared under the stubby hood. Shrubs and road signs whipped by in a blur. In the oncoming lane, a vehicle swelled in seconds from a dot to a large sedan in police colors. Sarah swung over, raising a cloud of dust as the right-hand tires briefly left the pavement. She swung back to the raised center of the road. The other car had already disappeared behind them. "Two cars on this road for a hundred miles, and the other one has to be a cop."

John glanced back, but his view was still obscured by the dust cloud. "Is he turning around?"

Derek said, "Are you kidding?"

Sarah looked in the big side view mirror. Seemingly on the horizon, lights twinkled. "He'll chase us all the way there. But before that, he'll call it in."

Cameron turned to look out the back window at the police cruiser growing larger behind them. She unbuckled. "Goodbye, Anna. Goodbye, Jack." She reached for the handle of the big sliding door, slammed it back, and disappeared out the opening into the hammering wind.

Sarah swerved away as Cameron hit the blacktop. The cyborg skipped down the pavement and up into the air like a lost tire, tumbling and spinning, her outflung arms blurry as propeller blades, getting smaller as she shed momentum and fell behind. The police cruiser's rear end drifted and white smoke spurted from all four tires; even ABS wasn't enough to fully overcome a panic stop at a hundred forty miles an hour. Cameron flew sideways over the hood and struck the windshield, mashing it in and hazing it with cracks, then bounced high over the top of the cruiser to land somewhere behind it. The police vehicle came to a stop, and the scene shrank away behind them.

Anna spoke through her hand. "Will she be all right?"

"Probably." Sarah pushed harder on the pedal, but it was already flat to the floor.

Jack reached forward and pushed the door closed. "Will she kill him?"

John was still turned in his seat, looking back. "Probably not. But he's in for a bad time. Nobody's gonna believe his story."

When they reached the ridge that separated the road from the site, Sarah's hand hesitated over the four-wheel drive shifter.

"Don't," Lynch said. "You wouldn't get us halfway up before you bogged down, and then you'd never make your meet."

The van slowed at the foot of the dune. The doors opened before the vehicle stopped, and the two visitors were racing up the hill, sand flying behind them. John looked at his phone: 4:54. He sprinted up the ridge, huffing as he reached the top. Lynch and Anna were already on the floor of the wash, running flat out, Lynch a few steps in the lead. But the dark circle that marked the arrival site was still half a mile away, and there were only two minutes left. John stood at the top of the ridge to watch, and his mother and Derek joined him.

When Lynch and Anna were halfway across the valley floor, the black circle flickered with a faint greenish light. John looked at his phone again: less than a minute left. They'd never make it.

Anna came up behind Lynch, picked him up on the run like a package, and lifted him over her head as she put on a burst of speed like a dragster hitting second gear, her legs blurring.

The green light was a definite sphere now, and so bright it cast shadows in the desert sun. When the two travelers were six feet away, Anna heaved Lynch towards the light and leaped after him as the light flashed and disappeared, leaving spots dancing in front of John's eyes. They were gone.

-0-

Lynch thudded to the dusty floor of the warehouse and skidded a couple of feet. A glance back showed his wife on hands and knees on the device's small round platform, staring at the floor. Behind her, the display on the control console read 17:00:00. It blinked and went out.

"Doll?"

"I'm good. Just getting my bearings. GPS is back online. I've got the kids." The relief in her voice was almost tangible. "Time, five-oh-one P.M. the day after we arrived here. You were right about everything, Jack."

He stood, beginning to let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding when, from her open shirt collar, the pendant of a necklace slipped out, dangling from a slender chain. He quit exhaling. "Where did you get that necklace?" He was sure she hadn't been wearing one on the trip to the warehouse.

She looked down and fingered the pendant. "What are you talking about? I've had this forever." She looked up, and her eyes widened. "What happened to your _eye_?" Then she grinned. "Just teasing, love. Breathe. It's from Cammie." She stood, stepped to him, and placed a hand on his chest. "She said it was a gift from a girlfriend who turned out to be no friend at all."

"And she gave it to you? Not much of a heritage."

"She said it should go to a real one." She held it up again in her right hand, and brought her left hand up beside it, displaying a ring with a large clear stone. "It's pretty. Goes well with my wedding bands, don't you think?"

Lynch nodded, smiling, as he briefly gathered her into one arm for a hug. "And even better with those beautiful gray eyes."

She smiled back. "Did you see the look on Derek's face when I put my hand on your shoulder and he finally spotted them? I thought his breakers would trip."

"A man forever crippled by his programming." He turned for the distant exit. "Come on. We're way overdue. I'll bet we've got six very worried kids at home right now."

-0-

The van rolled to a stop next to the cruiser as Cameron was locking the patrolman in the trunk. She'd suffered some serious damage: her clothes were torn up and filthy, and her exposed surface showed more alloy than bleeding flesh. One eye, its eyebrow and lid and 'eyeball' torn off, glared at John like a targeting laser as she looked his way. Sarah's hand drifted behind her to the grip of her pistol, remembering the last time the cyborg had been so badly damaged. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not," John said, stepping toward her heedless of the danger. "You're a mess. Can you fix it?"

"Probably." She stood beside him, looking like an extra from a horror movie. "The infiltration sheath may die."

"Then we'll have to keep you in the basement and only let you out on Halloween," Derek said.

"We'll do whatever it takes to keep that from happening," John said with a sharp look at his uncle.

Sarah slapped the trunk lid. "Hey. Did you call this in?"

"Screw you," came the muffled reply.

"I'm not the one who's gonna be screwed. Officer, you're locked in a steel box in the Nevada sun. You won't last two hours. Is somebody coming for you or not?"

A moment of silence. "No. I was just about to when…" A pause. "Love of God, how did she…"

"All right." Sarah reached into the patrol car and pulled out the microphone. "Dispatch. Officer down and injured in a collision sixteen miles north of Palo Alta Road on I-95. He's stable, but send help soonest."

"_Identify_._ Give me –"_

Sarah walked away from the squawking radio. "Let's go."

Derek said, "You didn't give them the right location."

"Buying time, in case they're close. I didn't mislead them by much. They'll find him okay." She got back behind the wheel.

Cameron boarded the van with some effort: she dragged one leg, and her left arm hung limp at her side. _We'd better not go up against any cyborgs before we get her fixed_, John thought. _She doesn't look like she could fight off a chihuahua._ He helped her in to sit beside him. He studied the wreck of her once-beautiful face. The hollow of her throat was undamaged; John noticed something missing. "You lost your necklace."

"No. I gave it to Anna."

He settled into the seat and faced forward to avoid looking at her anymore. "Surprised you never just threw it away."

"Because Riley gave it to me? It was a tight present," she said. "You breaking up with her doesn't change that."

Sarah sent the vehicle down the road. "On to Vegas. Better late than never, I hope. Let's see if your pal Sarkissian is still waiting."

Derek nodded. "He will be. I'll call him. And he'll keep Kester and Ellison in a mood to deal." He smiled to himself, thinking of Lynch and Anna gone forever. "It's all carrots and apples."


End file.
